


Lost in Translation

by thesonder



Series: The Soldier & The Spy [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Avengers Family, Best Friends, Canon Dialogue, Developing Relationship, Domestic Avengers, Drama, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Secret Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 78,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24603739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesonder/pseuds/thesonder
Summary: Everyone knows there is something between Steve and Natasha.Everyone apart from them themselves, it seems.From their very first meeting in Avengers: Assemble, an inexplicable pull between the two has caused not only problems in the two's work lives as it progresses, but also caused a gradual, close friendship to evolve between them too. However, with both of them harbouring feelings caught at their first meeting that they both refuse to divulge, it is only a matter of time before it gets far too much, and everything explodes.When they are sent by Fury to an undercover mission in DC in 2014 and are compelled to go into hiding, they are forced to finally confront their feelings, and are subsequently entwined in a secret, ever-changing relationship consisting of stolen kisses, hidden glances and twisted truths.With both their lives on the line everywhere they go, will they be able to uphold this complex connection and use it to make them stronger, or will it end up being their eventual downfall?Only time will tell.Also this book will, so read it :)Part 1/3 of my series that rewrites the MCU's Romanogers, covering the movies Avengers: Assemble and Captain America: the Winter Soldier.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: The Soldier & The Spy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871884
Comments: 59
Kudos: 247





	1. Oh, Take Me Back To The Start - Prelude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ttwastony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ttwastony/gifts).



> Part 1/3 of the biggest fic I have attempted in my life, let's hope I can finish it super speedily as I have planned.  
> This has a cyclical narrative with present, third person tense and multiple POVs. The prologue details the end of Endgame, at that moment we all know where Sam asks about 'her', and Steve refuses say a word. Of course, the 'her' is not Peggy Carter at all, but Natasha Romanoff.  
> I have some really big plans for this fic.  
> Leave a comment letting me know what you want to see!

The Scientist - Coldplay.

The rough wood of the bench chafes beneath Steve Rogers' worn, shabby trousers, but he continues to stare out, straight ahead and all the way across the lake he hasn't visited in decades, not since _that_ day. Not since the funeral. He knows this is where they will be, ready to welcome him home. But to _their _home, not his. He has already found his home, and so he has really only come to tie up the last couple loose ends.__

____

The shield bumps heavily against him as he calmly moves it to the side, exerting force he perhaps may not have needed in his younger days. He can hear the faint conversing of Sam, Bucky and Bruce behind him, and their bewilderment on why he hasn't returned to the platform on which he departed. It is silent, and then he senses it. Bucky has seen him, and he calls the others over too. Smiling to himself, he continues to steadily gaze out over the lake in utter serenity. He has everything he ever wanted, and this is merely the bittersweet ending to what has been an incredible, incredible journey. 

____

He feels, more than hears, Sam approach him from behind. 

____

"Hi Sam." Is all he says. His voice is slightly croaky, which lines up accurately with the white wisps of hair he now dons on his head, and the wrinkles in his face that prove that this is a man who has lived. He hasn't seen Sam in roughly 80 years, but for him, it's been mere seconds.  
Sam smiles, confused, but also with a small level of comprehension.

____

"So did something go wrong, or did something go _right _?" he smirks.__

______ _ _

"Well, I... after I put the stones back, I thought...maybe I'll try some of that life Tony was telling me to get." he gestures. The image of Tony's face in his head mocks him, and he grins.

_____ _

"How'd that work out for you?" Sam asks. 

_____ _

A flash of the years that led up to this point leaves Steve silently reeling. Her hair, a bright red in the sun, falling, cascading, over her shoulder. The smell of late bloom flowers, long grass tickling his knees. Two gold rings, delicately pushed onto each other's fingers. Green eyes, staring into blue. Sunset kisses, midnight dances. The life they always wanted but never got. Lived, to it's fullest, in the mornings and the nights and in every second in between. 

_____ _

"It was beautiful." he smiles wistfully. Yes, that was the perfect word for it. _Beautiful._

_______ _ _ _

"I'm happy for you, truly." Sam says, and Steve knows he means it. Steve is happy for himself too. He thanks Sam in a small voice."Thank you."

_______ _ _ _

There is a short silence between the two men. One old, one young, but still, impossibly, exactly the same age.

_______ _ _ _

"The only thing bumming me out, is the fact I have to live in a world without Captain America." Sam chuckles, hands in his pockets. 

_______ _ _ _

"Well…" Steve mumbles, reaching for the shield leaning against the bench next to him. _Maybe you don't,_ he thinks. "That reminds me."

_________ _ _ _ _ _

__Carefully, he unveils the shield from it's brown leather case. Sam's face lights up comically at the sight and Steve smiles back before saying,_ _

_________ _ _ _ _ _

__"Try it on."_ _

_________ _ _ _ _ _

__The smile falls from Sam's face quicker than it came as he stares in disbelief first at the shield, and then back at Steve. He sees him exchange an incredulous glance with Bucky, who he can guess nodded in encouragement._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__Steve watches as Sam slowly, hesitantly, positions the shield on his arm. Steve sees the way he looks down at it, and knows he made the right decision._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"How does it feel?"_ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"Like it's someone else's."  
Steve chuckles internally._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"It isn't."_ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__Sam seems overwhelmed by emotions and Steve gives him a chance to compose himself before he can answer. Choked up, Sam says,  
"Thank you. I'll do my best."_ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__And Steve's heart beats gently in celebration. Because knows the world will be safe with Sam. And he trusts him to do it more than pretty much anyone here._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__Steve extends his hand to shake Sam's, using his other hand to pat the man's arm encouragingly._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"That's why it's yours."  
He sees Sam's eyes hover on the ring he wears on his left hand as they part. _ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"You wanna tell me about her?" he nods, gesturing to it. A cheeky grin slides over his face. Always there._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__Steve's hands fall back to his lap, one absentmindedly fetching the locket he keeps in his pocket and pulling it out._ _

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__"No... No, I don't think I will." he smiles secretively. Sam's eyes follow the movement of Steve's fingers as they caress the locket, inside of which a lock of bright red hair is clearly visible. His eyes display shock, but then an overwhelming level of understanding.__

___He went back for her._ _ _

__

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__

__"Are you happy?" he asks, in regard to the lock of hair, and the tight grip in which Steve clutches it._ _

__

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__

__He smiles back at Sam before gently putting the locket back in his pocket._ _

__

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__

__"The happiest I have ever been."_ _

__

__________ _ _ _ _ _ _

__


	2. There's a Reason, After All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to just say that at this point on the story there isn't a lot of leeway and places to take these characters because obviously they have only just met, so that is why the first few chapters will have to stick pretty close to the actual plot of _Avengers: Assemble_ , just until Steve and Nat begin to get to know each other a little more. Just wanted to set that out as a little disclaimer, I know it might get a bit boring, but it will be worth it!  
> Also, fun fact - most of the dialogue written in this book/series will be copied word for word from the various Avengers movies (to the best of my ability). That way, it’s just _that_ much more canon.

I Need You – M83 

LOCATION: N- AT. OCEAN, 14.5994° S, 28.6731° W  
DATE: 05/23/2012

The sun hits Steve in the face with a force almost unheard of as he steps off the ramp of the small jet and onto the runway of this colossal...what? Carrier? Submarine? _Both?_ He frankly has no clue. His head is now in a constant state of disbelief and shock as new information and the overwhelming capabilities of technology are introduced to him at a rate he is struggling to keep up with. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a flash of red but discards it as nothing, until his new friend and mild stalker Agent Coulson speaks up with the words, “Agent Romanoff.”  
Is it obviously a greeting, and as Steve turns to see the recipient, he is greeted with the flash of red he had glimpsed earlier. It belongs to a person's hair, a beautiful person at that, and she stares back at him with a steadiness that Steve finds almost intimidating. Scrap that, intimidating. Extremely intimidating. As her eyes bore into his, he feels like he has seen her before, maybe even known her. Like he would recognise those eyes anywhere. But it’s not possible. He has been asleep for 70 years, far longer than this woman, maybe even longer than her parents, have even been alive.  
Or maybe not. People live longer nowadays, don’t they?

“Captain Rogers.” Coulson introduces the mysterious woman. 

“Ma’am.” Steve greets her politely. 

In complete contrast to the courteous way he had, she simply replies, “Hi,” before turning her gaze to Phil almost immediately. Steve finds it odd, and even a little amusing, the informal way she responds. This woman is intriguing. For the time being, he continues to squint into the sun and shares a small smile with himself while Romanoff and Barton exchange words about the latter being needed on the ‘bridge’.  
As Coulson departs, Steve is left alone with this Agent Romanoff. They begin to head slowly across the tarmac (Steve isn’t sure exactly where to, but hopes than Romanoff knows where they’re going all the same) and the woman starts up conversation. 

“It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice.” Steve stays silent, waiting for her to continue. “I though Coulson was gonna swoon.” He smiles appreciatively but remains quiet. “Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

A sense of humour. Good, Steve liked that. “Trading cards?” he asks incredulously, turning to face her.

“They’re vintage.” she smirks. _So am I. _, Steve thinks. “He’s very proud.”__

__The redhead takes a lead as they approach a group surrounding a small jet engine. Steve, with relief, finds that he recognises one of the people._ _

__“Dr Banner.” he calls. The flustered, out-of-place looking man reminds Steve of himself when he was fresh out of the ice, but just less angry. He should be grateful, Steve thinks. If he _was _angry, this story would be a lot different. This man might be big, and green, and not even a man, for example.___ _

____“Oh, yeah. Hi.” Bruce Banner says, approaching Steve and shaking his hand. “They told me you’d be coming.”_ _ _ _

____“Word is you can find the Cube.” Steve explains, acutely aware of the redhead’s presence a mere few feet behind him. Banner looks around nervously and a little awkwardly._ _ _ _

____“Is that the only word on me?” he asks. Steve understands he is referencing the ‘big green giant’. Steve can see how insecure about this he is, and is quick to reassure him.  
“Only word _I_ care about.” _ _ _ _

____Banner nods appreciatively. He gestures around at all the planes, workers running back and forth, the loud roar of engines and shouts of young men, Agent Romanoff on the phone, the sharp scent of gasoline in the air.  
“It must be strange for you, all of this.”  
Steve turns to see a battalion of men jogging _one-two-one-two _directly across from him. “Well, _this_ is actually kind of familiar.”___ _ _ _

______A voice sounds from behind them and Steve turns to see the redhead has finished her call and has followed them as they strolled absentmindedly down the track._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Gentlemen, you may want to step inside in a minute. It’s… going to get a little hard to breathe.” She stares at him, crosses her hands across her front and relaxes into a stance Steve had adopted regularly in his short time spent in the army. _At ease. _Her eyes are fixed on his, and for a moment he could swear he sees them fall to his lips and linger there for a fraction of a second. Discarding the rash thought from his mind, he briefly wonders whether she has spent time in the military, before registering what she actually said.  
As if in response to this thought, the floor below Steve’s feet suddenly trembles and rumbles ominously. Radio chatter echoes over the large expanse on top of the carrier that Steve realises is far larger than he realised. _Far _bigger. Just as he is wondering whether things can get just any crazier, he hears a metallic whirring come to life from what seems to be beneath the very ship itself. It amplifies louder and louder until it is almost deafening._____ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Is this a submarine?” he asks disbelievingly. He and Banner both simultaneously begin to advance towards the edge of this immense machine._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Really? They want me in a submerged, pressurized, metal container?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________The sight that greets Steve at the rim of the platform is something to behold. What looks like hundreds, if not thousands, of tons worth of heavy machinery is fast raising from below the surface, the water that it dislodges cascading in waves this way and that. It takes a while for Steve to realise that they, Romanoff and Banner and himself on their concrete runway, are moving upwards too. Up and down the transport, alarms blare, airtight helmets are slammed onto heads, running footsteps making thudding sounds across the ground and the deafening crash of the waves causes a cold spray of sea air to slap across Steve’s face. The sudden, great movement makes both men stumble back slightly._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“No, no, this is much worse.” Banner states sarcastically, an almost frightened expression on his face._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Steve has the bizarre desire to laugh._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________As last minute arrangements are made, including bulky metal clips being attached to loops embedded in the ground and smaller transit ships' cockpits being sealed, the huge carrier suddenly skyrockets at an alarming rate high into the air, and Agent Romanoff ushers them to cover. Steve gladly obliges.  
She leads him and the scientist down a mess of winding, dimly lit corridors that Steve gives up trying to memorise the names of two minutes in. It’s a maze in this place.  
The detour culminates in what Steve has to assume is the ‘bridge’. Ah yes, his guess was right. There is his biggest fan, Phil Coulson, who had been sent up here earlier. Agent Romanoff glances behind her to check that Steve has kept up, something mischievous glinting in her eye, before diverting on her own path further into the hive of activity. Steve is sad to see her go, but is quickly distracted by the sight before him. There is more technology is this single room than Steve has ever seen in his entire life, and he’s well over 80 by now. Swarms of people fill the numerous desks, walking or sitting down, and their combined voices form a low level hum that screams efficiency. Steve cannot understand one word of their technical mumbo-jumbo vocabulary, but somehow he feels he might prefer it that way anyway.  
Just then, Steve hears an authoritative voice calling an ‘emergency protocol’ followed by a random number, but all he does is look around in awe. He sees Bruce slinking into a corner like a timid mouse. _Scientists. _He then hears Fury say ‘let’s vanish.’ and almost groans in defeat. He is well in above his head now. He knows that by some kind of magic, this ship, whatever it is, is now flying invisible.___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________He sees Nick Fury turn and come towards him and fishes his wallet out in resignation, proceeding to hand him a 10 dollar bill without even looking at him. Today, he has seen more than he did in his entire career before the ice, and he commends Fury for that. He genuinely didn’t think he could get anymore shocked, and yet here he was. Wandering further into the nest, he tries to take in as much as he can in the time he has.  
He sees Fury and Banner exchange a few words before they both turn to Coulson. Intrigued, he walks over to join in the conversation._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“We’re sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops… If its connected to a satellite, it’s eyes and ears to us.” Coulson explains.  
Steve sees the redheaded Agent crouch down by a screen with a young man’s profile on it. He must be the one this ‘Loki’ compromised. She examines it carefully and he stifles a jealous thought. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“That’s still not gonna find them in time.” she states anxiously.  
Steve is still staring at the woman while Bruce suggests some high-tech options to help rule some places out. Fury nods in agreement and beckons Romanoff to show Banner where he can work. Quick as a flash, she’s gone. Just like that. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Steve assumes a position at the head of all the chaos, where Coulson soon joins him. He has discarded his brown leather jacket, which leaves him in his plaid shirt, tucked under his embarrassingly high-waisted trousers. He only now realises just how out of place he really looks, and makes a mental note to get a new wardrobe as soon as he has the time._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Hiding a sigh, Steve accepts Coulson’s request to sign his trading cards. So the redheaded agent hadn’t been joking. He really wishes she had been.  
Coulson continues on about his cards, but Steve is unfortunately paying little attention. He mutters some agreements to placate the man before another man at a desk (named Jasper Sitwell, he notes) exclaims that they have a 67, no, 79% match on a face. Steve sees that its all the way in Germany. Hasn’t been there for a while. He wonders how it has changed. Dramatically, presumably. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________“Captain,” Fury calls, and Steve turns towards him. “You’re up.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________Breathing a sigh of relief, Steve nods. It would be a pleasure to get out of this hellhole of technology a little too advanced for his understanding.  
Fury asks a technician to show Steve to a secure room, where he says there is a surprise waiting for him.  
When the automatic doors open and Steve enters, what he sees fills him with a mixture of immediate anxiety, pride, fear and a powerful sense of duty._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

____________His suit, splendid in its coral blue, scarlet and white stripes, sits encased in a glass cabinet. Steve stares at it, uncomprehending. He has forgotten, _this is his life now. _Again. The fighting, is it what he wants? He has no time to find out. He has to put it on again, and go and fight for what is right.  
But instead of his mind being full of fighting strategies and techniques that might help him in the upcoming fight against this monster, only one thought occupies Steve’s brain, and he can think of nothing else. ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

______________He has to find out that woman’s name._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to get up!! It took longer than anticipated to write and I couldn't work out where to end it, for now anyways.  
> I really enjoyed writing this chapter. It was so fun to write from the perspective of little naive Steve (it rhymes, get it?) on his journey after coming out of the ice. It allowed me to see how much he has changed from this moment in the MCU all the way to confronting Thanos alone is endgame. Always the hero, always the sacrificial soldier. I like to think Natasha had a lot to do with that, but I know she at least had a little.  
> You can actually (hopefully) watch the scene I used to reference this chapter on YouTube, using this link: https://youtu.be/BPM-wYU3-Zo?list=PLkLimRXN6NKyZCaTlzLOHN4-HR8LM13ZU#  
> See you all soon!


	3. Everything Feels Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realised today that I have a LOT of material to cover and if I keep going at the rate I am going at the moment and the amount detail I include, I might just be here for years. So, while we are on the first _Avengers: Assemble_ movie, which is not completely important to the storyline centred around Steve and Nat, I hope to speed things up a little, and so from now on there will be less detailed descriptions of the plotline unless it is important to Steve and Nat’s development. Hope this is okay and works better :)  
> FYI in my version, Natasha is the only pilot of the ship, there is no other guy like in the movie. You know, just so Steve and Nat have a chance to talk ;)

The Last Time – Taylor Swift feat. Gary Lightbody

LOCATION(S): STGT. GERMANY, 48.7758° N, 9.1829° E,  
N- AT. OCEAN, 14.5994° S, 28.6731° W  
DATE(S): 05/23/2012, 05/24/2012

Fury informs Steve that he will travel with Agent Romanoff to Germany to intercept Loki in Stuttgart in a Quinjet that leaves within the hour. Once he has put on his new Captain America suit, tested out his shield and inspected himself briefly in the mirror, he heads out to the launching bay where he is supposed to meet Romanoff. He finds her waiting on the ramp that leads into the ship and as soon as she sees him coming, she heads straight inside. When the engine begins to thrum, Steve breaks into a run, Managing to board the jet just as the ramp comes up, he takes a seat inside, panting.

“You don’t wait, do you?”

Romanoff smiles. “You were always going to make it in time, I wouldn’t stress about it. Besides, we were going to be late.” she says coolly, calling back to him from the pilot’s seat, a headset snug around her ears.

“And now we aren’t?”

“As long as you don’t mess anything else up.” she smirks.

Steve stands from his seat and approaches the cockpit. They are far into the air now, soaring smoothly over dark clouds in the night sky. 

“You’re just a treat, aren’t you?” Steve says, one hand on an overhead bar to steady himself. Romanoff states steadily straight ahead, but sees the hint of a smile cross her face.

“I’ve been told that before, yes.”

Steve ‘hm’s in acknowledgment. “So, what do they call you?”

“What, you mean apart from Agent Romanoff? You’ll have to be more specific, Rogers. I’ve ‘gone by’ a lot in the past.”

“Okay, I’ll be more specific. Some call you the Black Widow.”

“Not so much anymore. I outgrew that name. It’s Agent Romanoff to most, Natasha to some, and Nat to a select few. That is all. The rest are just covers I've built for myself.” She explains, shifting a lever in the centre of the console. Not once do her eyes divert from the sky ahead of her. _Brilliant pilot._

“Natasha?"

“Yes?”

“It’s a nice name.”

“Thanks, Steve Rogers.”

“So you’ve researched.” Steve says. It isn’t a question. 

“Merely the basics. You’re quite the soldier.” 

“And you’re quite the spy.” Steve returns.

Natasha doesn’t answer then. Doesn’t even ask how Steve knows she used to be a spy.  
The remainder of the journey is conducted in silence, until they arrive above the great golden building in the centre of Stuttgart. Steve can see the immense crowd stretched out beneath them, all kneeling in front of Loki. Natasha drops him at the edge of the town and he races to the centre, ready to intercept.  
From there, he performs the epic landing that deflects the blast Loki had been ready to aim at the elderly gentleman. 

“You know the last time I was in Germany, and saw a man standing above everyone else, we ended up disagreeing.” he says as he straightens up.

“The soldier.” Loki hisses, bringing Steve briefly back to his and Natasha’s conversation on the Quinjet. Quite the soldier. Quite the spy. “The man out of time.”

“I’m not the one out of time.”

Steve hears the hum of the jet approaching them from the edge of the town where it had dropped Steve off. He hears Natasha warn Loki to stand down, but somehow doubts he is going to go down without a fight. Consequently, his grip tightens on his shield.  
When Loki aims a blast at the ship, a wave of fury washes over Steve and he immediately flings his shield in Loki’s direction with all the strength he can muster. Thankfully, Natasha had swerved to avoid the blast, and Steve launches himself towards Loki. The shield arrives back in his hand and he attacks with great force. When he is eventually disarmed by Loki, he lands with a shout on the hard concrete, his heart pounding and his muscles on fire. He had almost forgotten what this felt like.

“Kneel.” Loki commands, holding the sceptre to Steve’s helmet and pinning him down. 

“Not today!” he exclaims, before grabbing the sceptre and pushing himself out of the way. He then proceeds to hurl himself into the air, twirls and smacks Loki hard around the face with his boot. However, his freedom is short lived, and before he can gain distance from the villain, he traps him by the neck and flings him across the square again, sending him bowling into the concrete once more.

Steve groans, but the sound is drowned out by the sudden blasting of _rock music_ , which seems to emanate from the Quinjet above them. Steve is confused for a fraction of a second before he sees a mix of red and gold come rocketing around the corner of a building further down the street and blast Loki with a wave of gold energy that comes shooting out of his repulsors. Of course. 

Stark exhibits the same landing Steve had used earlier as Loki is sent flying and lands with a crash on the steps. With the combined forces of Stark, Rogers and Romanoff in the ship, Loki is forced to surrender.  
Before long, the duo have loaded Loki onto the Quinjet and they are speeding through the skies back to S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters.  
Steve finally gets a chance to take of the helmet he is forced to wear. He hates how constrictive it is, and how much it hides his face. Also, honestly, he just looks like a bit of an twat in it. _Language._ , he chides himself. He and Tony begin to talk in the corner of the ship. The billionaire teases Steve about he keeps in shape, and when Steve comments that Fury didn’t tell him he was calling Stark in, Stark only replies,  
“There’s a lot of things fury doesn’t tell you.” 

Before Steve can answer, a string of lightning bolts erupts outside the ship and the metal rattles around them. 

“Where’s this coming from?” Natasha comments, eyes wide at the quickly developing storm that rages outside their windows. Steve notices the apprehension on Loki’s face at the lightening, but when he comments on it, Loki only defends that he is not overly fond of what follows. In the time it takes the group to understand what he has said, it is too late, and a bulky man wearing a cape has already arrived and snatched Loki from their clutches, but not before knocking Tony to the other end of the ship. Steve has to hide the little surge of satisfaction he feels to see Tony humbled like that.

While the team debate who the mysterious, powerful man is, Steve prepares a plan to attack, but Tony just goes right ahead and plunges out of the ship and into heavy fog. Infuriated, Steve grabs a parachute and begins to attach it to his body. Ignoring Romanoff’s concerns, he deflects the comment about this man being some kind of god. “There’s only one God ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”  
He fetches his shield and follows Tony out of the ship and into the freezing, foggy air. 

When he finally finds Tony and the presumed Asgardian in the middle of a dark forest, they are mid-battle and evidence of the carnage that has ensued lies in the form of scattered wreckage and debris around them. He yells ‘hey!’ before slinging his shield to separate the two and put an end to their fighting. It returns to his hand with a clang, where he stands high up on the trunk of a fallen tree. “That’s enough!” 

Jumping down, he eyes the red-caped man with an intimidating glare. “Now, I don’t know what you plan on doing here-"

“I’ve come here to put an end to Loki’s schemes!” the angry male shouts in indignation. 

“Then prove it. Put that hammer down.” 

Tony attempts to protest, saying that the furious Asgardian likes the hammer too much, but instead is thrown across the forest floor. _Good call. That man talks too much._

“You want me to put the hammer down?” he yells. Steve sees what’s coming and has only seconds to prepare for it.  
The man flies into the air, hammer above his head and advances down towards Steve at an alarming speed. The soldier pushes his shield up in front of his body and braces for the impact, which it turns out, is spectacular.  
Pure, white-blue energy pulses around the clearing in which the two stand, annihilating all the trees in a one-hundred yard radius. The holder of the hammer is pitched backwards and the ringing from the impact of the hammer on the shield reverberates painfully in the air. 

Steve is left alone, at the centre of the field of destruction, covered by the shield. _It’s been a while, old friend,_ , he smiles to himself. The hum of the shield still echoes around them as the Asgardian and Stark get to their feet. Above the ragged panting of all three men, Steve says one thing,  
“Are we done here?”

It’s over. Both powerful Asgardians have been defeated. Natasha, in her ship, picks the four men up at the nearest clear area of the forest and they head back to headquarters, all silently begging that this time it is a success, and that another power from another world doesn’t interrupt their trip again. After all, Steve thinks, they’ve certainly deserved a break. Steve can’t wait to just go to bed. 

But if there’s one thing that Steve has yet to learn about being part of an elite team like this, it’s that you can never catch a break for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooo! Sorry this chapter was kinda boring, or it was for me at least. I did enjoy writing about Steve and Nat’s conversation on names in the beginning though. It will be important a lot later in the story. And yes, it was made up this time.  
> I think for Steve and the time he comes from, there is something to be said for getting to know people through their names. I think Steve prefers it than just snooping through a person’s files, as perhaps Natasha would do. It’s personal, and helps define them as a person, whether they have multiple names or not, and in this case, gives something for Steve to connect to Natasha with. 
> 
> I know I said I’d focus less on scenes like this with a lot of action but then I was like ‘oh screw it, it can be a long book’. People might have to wait longer for the good stuff, but that just makes it better when it finally arrives, right?  
> Don’t forget to bookmark, leave kudos and comment! <3


	4. Is This Love (Agent Romanoff)?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did not feeling like writing tonight, but I feel like I have a duty to get as far into this story as quick as I can, just so we can get to the good stuff. I also spent most of my day today reading Heart of the Storm by thegraytigress which was an incredible, incredible read and made me realise that my work absolutely PALES in comparison. But you know, you still gotta keep going. My writing skills pass just enough to write a script, but that is where it ends. Fortunately, I’m not looking to become an author, and am probably looking to be writing something resembling scripts anyway, so that’s good. Oops, I’m rambling again. Here is Chapter 4.

Is This Love? – James Arthur 

LOCATION: N- AT OCEAN, 40.5931° N, 74.0094° W

DATE: 05/25/2012

Natasha sighs exasperatedly and crosses her legs under the glass table. With Loki now in containment, her, Steve, Bruce and Thor, the god of thunder that they encountered on their trip back from Germany, have congregated to discuss his tactics and intentions, as well as the whereabouts of the Tesseract. It isn’t going well. 

Thor discloses Loki’s plans to use the Chitauri from outer space to win him the earth. At the words ‘outer space’ she catches Steve’s eyes and is amused at the surprise she sees there. She explains how Loki has Erik Selvig under some kind of spell to entrance him, along with one of their own. Rage rises in her at the recollection that Clint is still in their grasp and she averts her gaze, danger flashing in her eyes. 

“Have care how you speak. Loki’s beyond reason but he is of Asgard, and he’s my brother.” Thor states, in answer to a particularly harsh claim from Banner.

“He killed 80 people in two days.” Natasha retorts back.

“He’s adopted.” Natasha almost has the mind to laugh. Almost. But that’s before Tony Stark enters and wipes the floor with his scientific knowledge that goes straight over the majority of the room’s heads. She decides to roll her eyes instead.

Despite his cocky attitude, Natasha is relieved to see him. His humour brings a certain, fresh, lightness to the situation that no one else can compare to, and she appreciates it. After a few quick exchanges in manner of how Selvig is working on what he is, Fury finally enters and starts divvying up assignments. Banner and Stark are to work on tracking the cube, and Steve suggests starting with the sceptre. “It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a hydra weapon.”

“I don’t know about that. But it is powered by the Cube, and I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.” Fury snaps. 

“Monkeys? I don’t understand-“Thor begins.

“I do!” Steve exclaims joyfully. “I understood that reference.”

Natasha stifles a laugh in her hand. The man really is ancient. She finds it mildly endearing.  
And so, the group departs their different ways. Banner and Stark head to Banner's lab to conduct more research into the Cube and sceptre, Steve is sent to research, and Fury approaches Natasha, being the last one at the table. 

“Romanoff.” he nods curtly. She nods back at him. “I think you and I both know what your approach is.” 

“Yes sir.” She stands, and pulls up the live feed of Loki’s cell, where he stands as still as a statue in one spot. After observing him for a few seconds, she swipes away the screen and heads towards the elevators. As she turns, Nick calls after her,

“Oh, and Romanoff, I know you will want to find out as much as you can about Barton’s condition, but try to stick to the mission at hand. Focus on the greater good. We will deal with him eventually.”

She nods once in acknowledgement before the elevator doors close in front of her face, blocking the S.H.I.E.L.D leader from view.

* * *

As she descends in the lift, a jumble of uncoordinated thoughts including what to say to Loki, how to get him to expand on Clint’s condition, and the triumphant look on Steve’s face when he got the joke spiral around her head, before she reprimands herself for being so unfocused. _What the hell, Romanoff? Get your head together._ She has no idea why Steve’s face appeared in her thoughts like that, and it is with horror that she realises it is not the first time that has happened since their meeting on the aircraft runway. _Pull it together, now._

The elevator doors open onto one of the most bottom floors, where the cells are held. The silence is palpable, and it presses down on Natasha’s eardrums - a heavy weight of ominous dread that she can’t seem to shake. He’s here all right.

Delicately, so lightly that she barely even touches the floor, she creeps down the long hallways and shorter stairways towards the centre of the underground cavern, where she knows Loki is being held. When she reaches the centre, she sees his back is turned as he paces, and she uses this to her advantage, doubling her silent speed to approach the glass. When she is at the distance she likes, she slows to a halt and deliberately lets down her cover, stepping a little less quietly as she assumes her position, waiting for him to notice. It takes him less than a second.

“There’s not many people who can sneak up on me.” he announces. It’s praise. She ignores it. 

“But you figured I’d come.”

“After.” he grins evilly. “After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.” 

Natasha doesn’t know what he is on about. Fury hasn’t initiated any torture implements of any kind, to her knowledge. Yet. Still, she keeps her face impassive.

“I want to know what you’ve done to agent Barton.” If Clint’s mind has been damaged permanently, she won’t be able to forgive herself. He saved her and she failed to save him. 

“I would say I’ve expanded his mind.” Loki gloats. Natasha’s eyebrow twitches. She begins to walk towards him. Slowly, menacingly.

“And once you’ve won, once you’re king of the mountain, what happens to his mind?”

Loki make an unintelligible sound, almost like a scoff.  
“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?”

The question takes Natasha quite by surprise. It’s just, _wrong._ Foreign, strange to even think of her and Clint’s relationship like that. Her feelings towards him stem singularly from the fact that she owes him tremendously for saving her life and rescuing her from the KGB. The word _love_ doesn’t even fit in that equation. Gratitude, yes. But _love?_ No. When she thinks of the word _love_ , the only bizarre image that comes up is of Steve Rogers’ face, beaming. Horrified, she shoves that thought away forcefully, burying it deep inside her where it won’t resurface until she chooses for it to. She can’t be dealing with whatever mess that is right now. All of this happens within a second, and she answers back smoothly, with no indication of the chaos that had just taken place in her mind.

“Love is for children. I owe him a debt.” The phrase, _Love is for children._ echoes around where she stands. She hears it in the cold voice of the instructors in the Red Room as they force her to watch heartbreak take place in the lives of others. She hears it in the mantras they recited in the hall that were supposed to teach them the ‘essential lessons in life.’ She hears it in her own voice, and is disgusted by the words she uttered. 

Her arms constrict tighter across her chest, where she hadn’t realised she had folded them. It’s her ancient coping mechanism. The pressure on her chest used to make her feel safe when she lay awake at night, and the thoughts bringing back memories of the Red Room must have subconsciously triggered her arms to squeeze around her midsection like that. She relinquishes them gently. 

“Tell me,” Loki ushers Natasha to go ahead, moving backwards to sit down on his cot. 

“Before I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D…I… Well, I made a name for myself.” she says coolly, accompanying him and taking a seat a bit behind her. “I have a very specific skill set.” Flashes of gunshot wounds, roundhouse kicks and screams temporarily blind her, but she invisibly waves them away irritably. “I didn’t care who I used it for, or on. I got on S.H.I.E.L.D’S radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call.” She finishes, eyes falling to the floor. She owes him a debt. One she will not be able to repay if she lets him get take over by this monster in a cage. _Monster._ The word echoes in her head. 

“And what will you do if I vow to spare him?” 

“Not let you out.” she smiles slyly.

“No, but I _like_ this.” Loki hisses, his smile far more evil than hers had been. “Your world in the balance, and you bargain for one man.” _Hardly,_ she thinks. _Her world has hardly ever been ‘in the balance’._

“Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I’m Russian. Or I was.” she jerks her head. 

“And what are you now?”

“It’s really not that complicated.” She gets to her feet again, arms folded. “I got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.” 

“Can you?” Loki asks, searching her intensely. “Can you wipe out _that much_ red? Dreykov’s daughter…” her composure falters. She hears the gunshot as though it is right next to her. A scream, far too high, far too young. Her throat constricts.

“…São Paulo…” The memories haunt her but she is practised at putting them away. Her mind stops her. Should she? She could use this to her advantage. She flits back and forth, her brain a disarray of tumbling thoughts. “…the hospital fire…?” Okay, that was a low blow. It’s as though she can still feel the flames licking her body, burning, smoking, skin. The hiss of her flesh as it disintegrates. The smell of it burning turns her stomach. “Barton told me everything.”

Of course he did. Her worst secrets, now in his hands. _Thanks, Clint._ “Your ledger is dripping. It’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer. Pathetic!" he yells. "You lie and kill, in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you. And they will never go away.” Loki’s fist smacks against the glass, and she forces herself to jump, the horrified expression still frozen on her face. “I won’t touch Barton, not until I make him kill you. Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear. And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I’ll _split_ his skull.” Natasha turns away sharply from his face, up against the glass, and creates a safe distance between them. The imagery he creates is disturbing, but she cannot let her cover fall. “This is my bargain, you mewling quim.”

“You’re a monster.” she accuses, hoping he will take the bait. _We are all monsters here._

“No. You brought the monster.” _Ah ha!_ Becoming still all at once, she raises her head and turns, all the fear and terror in her voice replaced with cool collection.

“So, Banner. That’s your play.”

“What?” she raises her hand to her ear and clicks the button to activate her intercom. “Loki means to unleash the hulk.” She announces into it, talking fast as she departs from the underground hangar. “Keep Banner in the lab. I’m on my way. Send Thor as well.”

Once she has reached a quarter of the way around the large dome Loki is entrapped in, she turns triumphantly to face him again. “Thank you, for your cooperation.” she smiles victoriously, before exiting down some stairs and left at another corridor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! That chapter took a lot longer than I anticipated to write! But! We did get to see Natasha’s point of view, which was a nice change. I can do both Steve and Nat’s point of view at the same time because I write in third person but not if they’re in completely different places doing completely different things! Besides, I enjoyed chilling in naïve Steve’s mind. It was fun. I always found Natasha a lot more complex and layered than straight-forward Steve with his untouchable morals. I think that’s why nit always appealed to me more as a character, but oh well. They’re still soulmates :) 
> 
> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!


	5. No Light in Your Bright Blue Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry this took so long to get up, this chapter had a whole lot of dialogue which I needed to find and then create a timeline of to get it right. I may have gotten some things wrong though so please point them out if you see anything.

No light, No light – Florence + The Machine

LOCATION: S.H.I.E.L.D HELICARRIER, GRAVESEND BAY, NYC 40.5931° N, 74.0094° W 

DATE: 05/26/2012 

A mix of rage, betrayal and disappoint courses through Steve’s enhanced veins as he stares down at the box, inside of which lies weapons and technology that are clearly HYDRA-made.  
So Stark, and Banner, had both been right. Steve hates having to admit that, but they were. Fury _had_ been hiding this, and God knows what else, from them. Gently examining the weapons, Steve notices markings on them that spark a deluge of memories. This is the Arnimhilation 99L Assault Weapon selection. These had been used by the Red Skull. So everything was true. S.H.I.E.L.D are even going to go as far as to harness the power from the Tesseract to create similar weapons to the ones Steve holds in his hand. He can’t let this happen. Cautiously, he dislodges a heavy weapon which resembles a beam ray and storms out of the storage area and up to the higher floors, where the lab lies. 

He enters as Stark sits in front of a screen, Fury on his feet in front of him. He sees through the screen that stark has decrypted the information and is confronting Fury.

“What is phase two?” he asks Fury in what seems like a playful, curious voice, but Steve doesn’t miss the venom underneath.  
He approaches a nearby table and slams down the beam ray weapon onto it, initiating a loud bang. 

“Phase two is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the Cube to make weapons. Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me.”

“Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that were making-“ Fury claims, but Stark interrupts him.

“I’m sorry, Nick. What were you lying?” Steve turns to see Tony spinning the screen round to face them. On it are obviously detailed plans to construct weapons. 

“I was wrong, Director. The world hasn’t changed a bit.” Steve says adamantly. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Natasha and Thor enter. She looks weary and dishevelled, while Thor just looks confused. 

“Did you know about this?” Banner gestures to Natasha accusingly. 

“You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?” Natasha warns Banner. Steve sees the danger the same time as she does and silently implores that Banner leaves before the situation escalates. Banner laughs dryly.

“I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed.”

“Loki is manipulating you.” Natasha informs Bruce, her voice level. She sees he is getting agitated and slowly walks towards him, trying to reason with him. 

“And you’ve been doing what exactly?” Bruce criticizes her. 

“You didn’t come here because I bat my eyelashes at you. Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” Natasha follows Bruce as he reaches the screen and studies it. “I’d like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.” He looks expectantly at fury, who simply points at Thor.

“Because of him.”

“ _Me?_ ” Thor questions, pointing to himself. 

“Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.” Fury explains, looking at each of the heroes in turn around their loosely formed circle.

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.” Thor says calmly but defensively. 

“But you’re not the only people out there, are you? And, you’re not the only threat. The world’s filling up with people that can’t be matched, they can’t be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve speaks up from the side.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what brought Loki to it, and his allies. It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.” Thor adds, pointing to Nick. 

“A higher _form?_ ” Steve asks anxiously. 

“You forced our hand. We had to come up with something.” Fury defends. 

“A nuclear deterrent. Because the always calms everything right down.” Stark calls Fury’s bluff.

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark.” _He’s got a point there,_ Natasha thinks.

“I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep –"

“Hold on, how is this now about me?” Tony halts Steve with his hand.

“I’m sorry, isn’t everything?” Steve fires back. 

“I thought humans were more evolved than this.” Thor targets Fury.

“Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?” Nick snaps.

“Are you boys really that naïve?” Natasha joins in. The group descends into chaos, each person arguing and firing shots at one another and gesturing furiously.  
Behind them, the sceptre glows ominously, and unknown to all, its grip on their minds twists and turns joyfully, insinuating more tension and dispute each passing second. 

“You speak of control, yet you court chaos.” Thor demands at Fury.

“That’s his M.O, isn’t it?” Bruce interrupts from the other side of the room. “I mean, what are we, a team? No no no, we’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re a… we’re a time bomb.”

“You need to step away.” Fury cautions Bruce with his hand. 

“Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?” Tony defends, slinging an arm around Steve. Quick as a flash, Steve discards his arm with a little more force than necessary.

“You know damn well why, back off.” he shoots at Stark. Natasha sees his eyes flashing dangerously. It’s the first time she has ever seen Steve not be, well, Captain America. Cheery, perfect 40s-style morals, good-man-in-a-storm Captain America. The bright blue in which she had so admired in his eyes, is gone, replaced with a dangerous darkness that Natasha doesn’t like one bit. 

“Oh I’m starting to want you to make me.” Stark threatens, looking steadily on into Steve’s now dark eyes. 

“Yeah. Big man in a suit of armour.” Steve teases, circling Stark menacingly. “Take that off, what are you?”

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” Tony says without a moment’s hesitation. Natasha jerks her head to the side approvingly. 

“I know guys like that worth ten of you. I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.” 

“I think I would just cut the wire.” Tony says. Steve stares at him incredulously and then smiles in utter disbelief, looking away before returning his eyes to Tony’s.

“Always a way out. You know you may not be a threat but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero? Like you? You’re a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.” Tony steps towards Steve, getting right in his face. He spits the last word in his face. 

All while this is happening, the still air above the helicarrier is suddenly disturbed by the arrival of a small jet, in which a compromised Clint Barton is retrieving a high-tech arrow from large case on the floor of the aircraft. The ramp opens and Clint moves to the edge of the ship and readies his bow, taking aim. The arrow lands, _click_ , exactly where he wants it. It begins beeping and flashing as Clint retreats back into the ship, his unnaturally coral blue eyes glinting.  
In the lab, Steve is still glaring down at Tony, both unknowing of the danger they had just been put in. “Put on the suit. Let’s go a few rounds.” 

Thor laughs from the other end of the room. “You people are so petty and tiny.”

“Yeah, this is a team.” Banner says sarcastically.

“Agent Romanoff, would you escort Doctor Banner to his…”

“Where? You rented my room.” says Banner, referring to the cell they are currently holding Loki in. 

“The cell was just in case-"

“In case you needed to kill me. But you can’t. I know, I tried.” Everyone looks at him in mild fear and confusion. “I got low. I didn’t see an end. So, I put a bullet in my mouth, and the other guy spit it out." The shock is palpable in the air around them. "So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good. Until _you_ dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.” He aims the last bit at Natasha, who doesn’t flinch.

“You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You want to know how I stay calm?” he says, his voice trembling. Around the room, latches are flipped back from guns, safety flaps exposed. Natasha’s hand hovers over her pistol, as does Fury’s. 

“Dr Banner.” Steve calls Banner from across the circle. “Put down the sceptre.”

Bruce looks down in shock to see indeed, the sceptre was heavy and glowing in his grip. An agitated alert from the computer screen on the other side of the lab distracts them all, and Banner replaces the sceptre onto the table before rushing to inspect why the machine was alerting them.  
“Sorry kids, you don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“Located the Tesseract?” Thor asks.

Natasha follows Bruce over to the screen eagerly.

“I could get there fastest-"

“The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it-"

“You’re not going alone-"  
Steve grabs Tony’s arm, but he slaps it away as Steve had done not that long ago.

“Put on the suit, lest find out.”

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.” The two men square up to each other again.

“ _Put on the suit._ ” Steve mutters angrily. 

Across the room, Bruce’s eyes widen. _ENERGY SIGNATURE MATCH: 100%_

“Oh my God.”

Upon the jet high above the helicarrier, Clint activates the arrow with one twitch of his hand, causing the entire quarter of the ship where the six agents currently reside to immediately explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooo, cliffhangers! Except it's not because most of you know what happens anywayyy... oh well!
> 
> Sorry it was so short lol, but I hope you liked it anyway!


	6. He's Out His Head, I'm Out My Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly at this point the chapters are just a play-by-play of the movie, but trust me, once we get to The Winter Soldier, things gon get real fun... ;)

Him & I - Halsey, G-Easy

LOCATION: N- AT OCEAN, 40.5931° N, 74.0094° W  
DATE: 05/26/2012

Heat, fire, courses at lightning speed down the corridors, the pipes, the open air, down every tiny pocket of the ship, annihilating everything it comes in to contact with. The lab where the superheroes and spies alike are gathered blows up spectacularly in a cacophony of debris flying and a deep boom of detonation. The sound of glass shattering is drowned out by the thuds of the bodies of the heroes being flung in different directions and landing, hard, on the floor. The back wall, where Natasha and Bruce are gathered, shatters in the blast and throws the two of them out of it and down onto a platform a few floors below with a crushing impact.

Pressed against the harsh, grated, metal ground, Natasha is unaware of everything going on half a dozen floors above her. Engine number 3 has been hit and in order to make repairs, they would have to be on the ground. If one more engine is lost, they’ll be there anyway. Somebody has to go in manually and patch the engine. Those people are Steve and Tony. 

“Romanoff?” Fury yells at her through the intercom. Natasha, however, is otherwise occupied. 

On her stomach, she attempts to wriggle free from underneath the huge of metal that clamps down her leg, but to no avail. She gasps, winded from the fall. Pain lances up and down the calf trapped under debris and she suspects her ankle at the very least sprained. Trying to catch her breath, she turns back forwards and struggles to engage her intercom. “We’re okay.” she gasps. Bruce jerks beside her and her chest fills with concern and doubt. “We’re okay, right?” 

Meanwhile, Clint and Loki's lackeys have infiltrated the helicarrier, and Steve and Tony race them to Engine 3, both determined to do exactly the opposite of each other. 

“Doctor?” Natasha asks Banner, but he is growling and convulsing on the floor, fists clenching and unclenching. He is turning into the Hulk and Natasha is trapped, unable to escape. Pure terror blinds her for a second. Desperately she tries to pull her leg out again but it stays firmly crushed under the metal, throbbing and probably broken. “You gotta fight it. This is just what Loki wants. We’re gonna be okay, listen to me.” Her voice cracks in fear, the sweat creating a thin sheen over her face. She sees two engineers running towards them and one of them asks her if she is hurt but she furiously waves them away. She wants as little people as possible to die as a result of this. If there’s one thing she can control at least it’s that. “We’re gonna be okay.” Natasha repeats, like a mantra, watching the men run to safety. At least she’s done one thing right. 

Bruce, or The Hulk, snarls ferociously, on his hands and knees, jerking and writhing. 

“I swear on my life, I will get you out of this, you will walk away, and never ever-“

“ _Your life?!_ " Bruce roars at her. His face is patched green, and she knows he is close to fully transforming. He rocks up onto his knees and flexes. His green chest expands, tearing his shirt wide open at the seams. His muscles grow, build up, and she knows she has to get out of there. _Now._ She yanks her foot again but the only thing that happens is something definitely tears in her ankle. She pants in exertion and searing pain. The Hulk skids off the platform they had both landed on and falls a couple meters onto the floor below.

There, his shirt, rips clean off, and as he turns to her, she sees the last of Bruce Banner disappear in the dark, merciless eyes of the Hulk. “Bruce.” she whispers in panic. But Bruce is gone. As he grows to his maximum height, the lights in this underground floor flicker, and the canister the green monster leans against crumples beneath his touch. He lets out a monstrous, deafening, roar. Pure hysteria rises in Natasha and with one last, desperate wrench, her leg _finally_ comes free. She scrambles to her feet with a cry of alarm. Her damaged ankle torments her, refusing to work she way she wants it to.

Now fully transformed, the Hulk turns to Natasha with a malicious growl. Natasha’s mouth falls open for a split second before she turns and runs as fast as she can towards the stairs behind her, doing her best to ignore how her burning, throbbing ankle screams in agony. Before she can get half way up, however, the Hulk is upon her, and she launches herself into the air, swinging on a bar just above her head. The stairway she had just been on is ripped to the floor by Hulk’s ginormous hand. Natasha manoeuvres in between the rails of another platform higher above her and turns to see the Hulk eyeing her. His next meal. She clambers onto a pipe and lands on her feet the other side. Her broken ankle can’t hold the weight and collapses beneath her, sending her to her knees. Yet, still, she gets up again, and moves on. Just in time, as the grate she had her weight on is ripped out from beneath her by the Hulk. She flings herself between multiple metal grates, platforms, poles, always just a step ahead of the Hulk as he tracks her from beneath. 

When she lands again for the last time, it is almost pitch black. The dim lights don’t reach where she has ended up down here. The roars from the Hulk are quieter, and she is surrounded by clusters of metal canisters that mix on ceiling and floor to create a convenient multi-level maze for Natasha to hide in. Silently, she slinks beneath a couple great cylinders and between two batches of them, pausing to listen for the sounds of the Hulk. She hears his heavy footfalls, slow and heavy, and when she decides they are far enough to be able to move, she pulls out her pistol and loads it. As quietly as she can on a dead ankle, she half tiptoes, half limps, into a more open space, her gun held close to her face.

When she turns, her heart almost stops. It's the Hulk, and he screams in her face, and Natasha knows if she hadn’t been the Black Widow in that moment, she would’ve screamed, and _loud._ She doesn’t hesitate to fire two shots from her gun into the pipe above the Hulk’s head and it whistles as the gas that had been trapped inside it escapes. It makes the Hulk jump, which had been Natasha’s intention, and the Hulk bangs his head clumsily on the pipe. Now distracted, he bellows in rage. Natasha takes the chance and runs the opposite direction.

She emerges onto a long stretch of grated, metal floor that forms the bottom of a corridor lined with glass doors. Her limp extremely obvious, painful and hindering now, she stumbles as fast as she can down the thin passageway. However, before she can get half way down it, the Hulk comes thundering after her, creating a trail of destruction in his wake. He smashes through the corridor, his size far too big for its small confines. The glass around him shatters and pipes explode, sending sparks everywhere. Natasha, now with little regard for her ankle and more for her life, frankly, breaks into a sprint. Agony from her ankle rises up her entire leg but she determinedly ignores it, leaping over everything that falls in her way, desperately trying to create distance between her and this killing machine.  
_What if I don’t survive this?_ The thought runs quick and fast through her mind, only fleeting, but it leaves a mark on her. _What if?_ She can’t let herself think like that. She has to survive this. There is no other option. 

She hears the Hulk speeding up, everything around him getting crushed, punctured, broken, blown up, shattered. The smell of foreign gasses fills the air, the sound of everything disintegrating assaults her ears. In resignation, she lifts her arms up over her head in an attempt to protect her head from a hit, her face from the flying glass, herself from everything. 

The blow hits her out of nowhere. And suddenly, she is in the air. Pain far worse than her ankle erupts across her chest as she yells and lands with exceptional force against a large container, crumpling to the floor instantly. The Hulk goes hurtling past her and collides with the wall at the end of the corridor. Dazed, Hulk gathers his bearings as Natasha struggles to sit up with a moan. She can’t breathe in without the pain getting worse, sharp, localised in the right side of her chest. She suspects as least one broken rib. Gasping, she looks up, defeated, into the unforgiving eyes of the Hulk. _I can survive this, right? Right?_

_Maybe not._

As she prepares for the death blow, clutching her right side, groaning in pain and leaning up against this cool metal shipping container, her heart beats defiantly. _It’s angry at her for giving up_ , she thinks.

But before the Hulk’s hand can make impact with her body, it is gone, out of Natasha’s eyesight, far away, his body bowled over and into by a flash of red and silver, sent flying through another wall and into another sector of the basement entirely.  
_Thor._ , she thinks. _She is saved._

As she hears Thor and Hulk square up and prepare to fight in the next room, she leans forward off the metal container and wheezes, simultaneously relieved and terrified.

* * *

Meanwhile, Steve accompanies Tony inside the broken remains of Engine 3. Both men proceed to nearly lose their lives trying to get the propeller turning and the helicarrier at a level altitude again. Under gunfire, Steve is forced to use his whole body strength to pull himself from a potentially fatal fall back onto the ship. Tony gets stuck in the propellers and is almost shredded trying to turn them with the strength his own Iron Man suit possesses. However, despite this, the red lever needing to be pulled to steady the ship is activated, and both men survive. 

Trying her best to take deep breaths, Natasha gets to her feet and flees the scene of destruction left by the Hulk, the shouts and roars caused by the fighting of Thor and the Hulk growing quieter and quieter behind her. Clint has to be on this ship, and she has to find him.

As time goes by, the breathing gets easier, and she relinquishes her grip around her midsection. It is painful, so painful, but she finds it easy enough to use the techniques the Red Room had taught her and tie up that pain, put it in a neat little box, and lock it away. She does the same with her ankle, and she begins to be able to think clearer. As she rounds a corner, she sees him. 

Stalking a higher platform, dutifully on his way to cause more carnage. Stealthily, not unlike the time she snuck up on Loki, she dances silently across the floor, barely touching it as she gets closer and closer to Clint’s back. When she is less than a meter away from him, he stops. Quick as a flash, he pulls back his bow and arrow, ready to fire, but Natasha grabs the bow just as it fires and uses it to jam into him. He holds onto it and retaliates, forcing her to stumble backwards to catch her footing. She roundhouse kicks him in the stomach with her good foot and dives into a gap the parallel pipes lining the wall, sliding down a ramp and coming out the other side. While Clint is looking down the gap in which she vanished, she leaps back onto the platform and attacks him with a fierce kick again, shouting as the pain heightens and she realises she kicked him with her broken ankle. Using a pole connecting the platform and the ceiling, she swings onto a parallel platform and lands on her feet. Clint follows her easily, jabbing his bow towards her again and again. She avoids and blocks every blow, thrusting her fists in front of her face as Clint slams the bow towards her face. It hits her arms but she withstands the pressure. When he tries to pull way, she holds onto the bowstring and the two grapple with it until Clint slams Natasha against the platform railing, her back arching. Casting Clint a backhanded slap to the face, Natasha snatches the bow away and spins elegantly, positioning the bow defensively over her shoulders. she thinks she has the upper hand, until Clint whips out a knife.

Natasha barely blocks his next blow, aimed at her face, and stomps on his foot while simultaneously kneeing him in the stomach. He grunts, falling to his knees, before almost immediately rising to his feet again and attacking. Natasha grasps the arm he used to threaten her with the knife and twists it once, twice, eliciting an pained groan from Clint. He merely tosses the knife into his other hand and stabs it at her, but only hits midair. Natasha attempts to pin his arm up by his shoulder but is instead pinned up against another pole by Clint’s body. She pushes forward, but his weight doesn’t move off her. He uses another hand to yank her hair back, her chin jerking up to towards the sky. His knife inches dangerously closer to her throat. She struggles under his grip but he doesn’t budge. She feels the cool, ice of the knife caress her neck, slowly, nearer to death... 

In a flash, she jerks forwards, to the right of Clint’s knife, and digs her teeth into his arm. He yells and releases the knife, exactly as Natasha had wanted. Finally, Natasha uses her momentum to flip herself over his arm so she faces the other way, and slams Clint into the platform railing with all the force she can muster, crying out.  
His head smashes into the bar with a sickening clang and he collapses against it, letting out a strangled groan. While he tries again and again to get up, and fails, Natasha urgently tries to gather air into her lungs, ready for a counterattack. But none comes. Perhaps the impact knocked a part of Loki’s grip out of his control, because when Clint raggedly gets to his knees and looks up, he actually says her name. 

“Natasha?”

But Natasha doesn’t hesitate to hit him with a blow around the head that causes him to be knocked out. She has no place for forgiveness in her bones right now. Maybe later. For now, she has a ruined ankle and two shattered ribs to attend to. 

Once has called the S.H.I.E.L.D team to come and fetch him and take him up to a _secure_ room in the infirmary, she limps up there ahead of them first. While the pain is easier to ignore, it burns and stabs her chest and contracts her breathing, while every step she takes on her twisted, shattered ankle sends spikes of it up her leg.  
Yes, _it will take a while for forgiveness to come around._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well THAT was a lot of fight scenes. I was going to end it after the Hulk attack but I've been meaning to try and extend the chapters if I can so I decided to include Clint and Hulk. People ship her with both of them, but Steve still remains the only one who has never tried to kill her and the only one Natasha has never had to fight off. 0_0 I said what i said.  
> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!


	7. Who Are You in the Dark?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hihi! Sooo I decided to post another chapter today, because to tomorrow I go back to school again! This means at the time I normally post, I'll be at school, so I decided to just post another one today.  
> The reason why it is so short is because after this is the Battle of New York, which is going to be a looong ass couple chapters, so I wanted to end it before they went into battle!  
> Enjoy!

In The Dark - Camila Cabello

Location: N- AT OCEAN, 43.5931° N, 75.0094° W  
Date: 05/26/2012

It doesn’t take Natasha long to find the medical supplies needed to patch herself up. She knows she can’t take too long, as Clint will be up here shortly, and she must tend to him when he arrives. She finds a stable brace to fit around her ankle once she has agonisingly set it back into the correct place, however finding something for her ribs is a little trickier. She settles for a large bandage she can bind her chest with, which should keep the ribs supported and stable until she has more time to treat them. She has the fabric half tied around her and is attempting to reach around to pin it when there is a knock on the door. She jumps, mostly because she is actually topless apart from this large bandage that covers most of her torso, but also because she hadn't expected to be disturbed here. Whirling around defensively to give this stranger a piece of her mind, she stops when she sees Steve Rogers in the doorway. Her hand almost drops the end of the bandage she holds in her hand in shock. 

“Sorry.” he starts, gesturing to her vulnerable state and his inappropriate intrusion. “I heard the Hulk attacked you and just wanted to check you got out okay. Are you okay?”

“Do I _look_ okay, Rogers?” Natasha exclaims angrily, and Steve flinches. 

“Right. Yes. Sorry, my bad. Do you need any help?”

Natasha shakes her head, but then proceeds to lose grip of the bandage and almost drops it, rendering her previous claim void. 

Steve wordlessly steps forward, seizing a roll of medical tape as he does. Natasha cautiously lets him rip a strip off of the tape with his teeth and take the edge of the bandage out of her hands. He secures it around her back with the tape, his hands strong, steady, and careful. Natasha can't help but notice that his fingers are warm, but they feel like ice on her skin and she has to refrain from the urge to shiver. Natasha stays silent, staring determinedly away. Once Steve has applied a couple more strips of tape for good measure, he signals that he is done and Natasha turns to face him. 

“Thank you.” she says quietly. There is a silence, as Natasha looks at the floor and Steve looks at Natasha. 

“No problem.” Steve replies. There is so much to say, so much that could’ve been said, but it hovers unsaid in the air between them.

As if bringing himself to, Steve moves backwards towards the door. “Fury called me before… I’m late, I have to go. Did you hear about Coulson?” he says sadly, remembering the fallen agent, who demise he had learnt about just shortly before. He never got to have his cards signed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did… It sucks.” Natasha agrees dejectedly. “He didn’t deserve it.”

“He didn’t. I’ll see you soon.” Steve tells her, before disappearing out of the door and to the right. Natasha allows herself a brief second to process what the _hell_ had just happened before she slides the top half of her suit back up and over her arms and bandaged torso and tidies up the scattered supplies hastily. She leaves the room without a second glance back.

* * *

Natasha manages to locate Clint in a room a couple doors down the hall and enters quietly, dismissing the S.H.I.E.L.D agent who has been monitoring him. Clint is sat on the bed, shaking his head violently from side to side. His body is tense, hands clenched under their leather confines, sweat pouring out of his forehead. Is it clear he is fighting the remainder of the control the spell has on his mind. She takes a seat next to him and observes him closely. His eyes squeeze shut as he grunts and shakes, trying to throw the spell off.

“Clint, you’re going to be alright.” she reassures him. His eyes flash open at her voice as he continues to convulse.

“You know that?” he chuckles scornfully. “Is that what you know?” 

Natasha doesn’t answer, simply getting to her feet and going to get Clint a glass of water. She can see the unnatural sapphire hue fading from his eyes, and knows he is almost completely back to himself. 

“I’ve got no window. I have to flush him out.” he gasps.

“You got to level out. It’s going to take time.” she returns.

“You don’t understand.” he pants. She puts down the jug of water gently, deliberately. _Don’t I?_ “Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out, and stuff something else in?” He looks up at her imploringly, wanting, needing her to understand. “Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”

Natasha looks at him, as if to make sure he is serious. “You know that I do.” _Of course I do._

Clint’s gaze moves away, taking in his surroundings. The dark grey silver of the metal walls. Bare floor, bare bed, minimal supplies organized neatly up in one corner. Pale grey chair against another wall. “Why am I back? How’d you get him out?”

“Cognitive recalibration.” Natasha stretches the truth as she sits down on the bed next to him. “I hit you really hard on the head.” She gives up, allowing herself a small smile. 

“Thanks.” he tells her gratefully. Natasha smiles a little wider in reply. When she reaches to release his restraints, Clint mutters, “Natasha, how many agents did I- "

“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself, Clint. This is Loki. This is monsters, and magic, and nothing we were ever trained for.” she stops Clint before he can go further. 

“Loki, did he get away?”

“Yeah.” Natasha admits regretfully. _And took one of our best along with him._ “Don’t suppose you know where?”

Clint shakes his head. “Didn’t need to know. Didn’t ask.” He begins to sit up and Natasha gets to her feet, walking over to the glass door. When she looks out of it, she finds herself inexplicably looking for a flash of red, white and blue. 

“He’s gonna make his play soon, though. Today.”

“We gotta stop him.” Natasha says intently, spinning to face him. 

“Yeah? Who’s ‘we’?” Clint is doubtful. 

“I don’t know. Whoever’s left.” _Tony, Thor maybe, and Steve. Steve._

“Well, if I put an arrow through Loki’s eye socket, I would sleep better, I suppose.” Clint says sardonically.

“Now you sound like you.” Natasha comments, relieved, as she sits back down on the bed next to Clint.

“But you don’t.” he replies, and the smile falls from Natasha’s face. “You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?”

The word soldier rings in Natasha’s head. No, not a soldier. _She_ could never be one. She supposes Clint is right. She is and always will be the Russian spy, intent on nothing but the mission she is tasked with. What a comic duo. The soldier and the spy.

“What did Loki do to you?” he asks, concerned. _Loki_ didn’t do anything, but Natasha can still feel the shadow of Steve’s touch on her back, and it haunts her. 

“H-he didn’t. I just…” she looks away as the summary of today and yesterday’s events catch up to her. A lump rises in her throat and she can’t finish, not that she knew how to anyway. 

“Natasha,” Clint murmurs as she stares at the floor. 

“I’ve been compromised.” Yes, compromised seems like the right word at the moment. Loki’s words repeat themselves in her head. _That much red…_

“I’ve got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out”

* * *

Clint is in the bathroom when it happens. Steve enters, no knock or anything. Just the words, “Time to go.” His expression is serious, and the gaze in which he locks eyes with Romanoff shows that this is strictly business and business only. 

“Go where?” she fires back, eyes glinting. 

“I’ll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?” he asks. Natasha knows it’s not a question, he has seen her fly one himself when they travelled to Germany together. He is checking whether she is in fit state to do so. After all, to him, her injuries must have looked pretty severe. Before she can answer, Clint exits the bathroom. 

“I can.”

Steve looks at Clint sceptically, before returning to Natasha. With a silent expression and eyes full of meaning, he asks whether Clint can be trusted. Natasha understands his question clearly and instantly, though she isn’t sure how, and nods. 

After receiving clearance from Natasha, Steve asks Clint whether he has a suit, to which Clint confirms that he in fact does. 

“Then suit up.”

Throughout the sizeable helicarrier, each team member prepares for battle. Thor can be found locating his hammer and channelling the energy of lightning through it, Tony can be seen at his workstation upgrading his helmet, Clint seen readying a fresh set of arrows and Natasha and Steve found preparing to be badasses because that’s Just What They Do™.

The fall of the afternoon finds Steve, Natasha and Clint marching dutifully towards a Quinjet, which a young man is currently set on fixing. When they board it, he looks up, bewildered, and says, “Hey, you guys aren’t authorized to be in here.”

But before he can continue, Steve holds up a hand in a distinctly old-fashioned manner and states, “Son, just don’t,”, with a unique _attitude_ , and Natasha is _living_ for it.

By the time Hill and Fury have finished their talk on the bridge of the helicarrier, the trio are already soaring out of the runway in their tiny jet and into the cloudy skies, Iron Man flying alongside, off to stop some villains from being evil and doing evil stuff.  
Natasha has never felt quite this part of a team. This team is what will help clear her ledger, and she knows it. Now all she has to do is find a way to stick with them.  
But her desire is about to become a little tricky to execute, because the Tesseract is ready and glowing above Stark tower, and the Chitauri are coming.

The battle, it seems, is about to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there we are. The Chitauri are coming, and the battle is about to begin...  
> I hope you all enjoyed that little scene of Steve and Nat in the infirmary I threw in. I was missing them a lot and just _needed_ to just put a little bit of sexual tension in there. It was necessary, promise!  
> My dork energy came out in the chapter as well so sorry about that lmao  
> Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated, and make sure to stick around for the next chapter, cause it's gonna be a good one!


	8. I Won’t Say a Word (But I Think He Knows)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of the Battle of New York is up! Sorry it took so long but... yk... the Battle of New York was pretty big soo…  
> You will also be able to see I tweaked a few things here and there. Natasha and Steve definitely seem to be getting closer…!  
> Natasha may have a teensy weensy crush on Steve… just a lil one. But I mean, who didn't? I know I did...

Home - Daughter

Location: MID-TOWN MANHATTAN, NYC - 40.7549° N, 73.9840° W  
Date: 05/26/2012

By the time the Quinjet has arrived on the outskirts of New York, the carnage has already begun, and is visible from every angle. People are fleeing as fast as their legs can carry them, smoke fills the polluted air, cars lie overturned or lit up in flames in the road, rubble and debris litter the already busy streets. And up there, upon Stark tower, is the blue rod of pure Tesseract energy that hurtles into the portal wide open against the grey skies. Chitauri monsters blast lasers at the ground and the people as they zoom around on tiny convertible ships.

On the way to Stark tower, Clint and Natasha are strapped into pilot seats in the cockpit of the jet, while Steve hangs onto an overhead bar in the main body. 

“Stark, we're on your three headed north east.” she informs Iron Man as they dive through the war torn streets of New York. 

“What, did you stop for drive thru?” Tony quips sarcastically. Natasha chooses to ignore that comment. “Swing up park, I’m gonna lay ‘em out for you.”

Natasha does as he says, laying in the coordinates and rounding the next corner with a swerve of the yoke. Just as she swings round the desired road, she loads the cannons beneath the ship, pulling a lever or her left that releases them below, ready to fire. Her and Clint are reaching the end of the street at an alarming rate, and will be met with a solid concrete wall unless they dive out of the way, and fast. But they can’t do that until Tony leads the group of Chitauri in front of them. And there he is.

The flash of gold and crimson would have otherwise been invisible to the naked eye had it not been being pursued by an ugly group of aliens on their own form of air transport. As it is, Natasha spots them, and opens fire. She manages to hit several of them and they go plummeting to the ground, but her and Clint are forced to pull up before they can do anything else, or any more damage to themselves and the ship. They soar higher and higher through the thick plumes of smoke, above the streets and buildings, slowly ascending to the top of Stark tower, where Loki and Thor are busy in combat. They slow to a halt, Clint carefully navigating the ship in the air, and watch the fight. 

“Nat?” he calls, gesturing to the dirty battle happening before them. In the back of the ship, Steve silently notes that Clint is allowed to call her ‘Nat’. _She considers him family then_ , he concludes. 

“See him.” she answers, and Clint swerves around so the ship is facing Loki head on. Natasha presses down on the trigger and begins firing at Loki, but he raises his sceptre in retaliation, and a blast of it hits the left engine. The propeller is destroyed and the ship rocks to the side, sending everyone inside off balance, even in their secure seats. It’s time for an emergency landing. As the ship careers off down into the streets below, Steve briefly sees Thor leap at Loki again, stopping him from doing any more harm to the Quinjet. He hangs on for dear life to the bar above his head, legs swinging, as the jet tumbles in the air, losing more and more height each passing second. Clint attempts to steer as best he can down safely, narrowly avoiding multi-storey buildings and crowds of civilians, and when they crash to the ground, uprooting slabs of concrete in waves, Steve is just relieved to be on the ground again, even if it's not for long.

He is the first out of the helicarrier, followed by Natasha and Clint. Natasha’s ribs did not take kindly to the impact of the crash, and her breathing comes in gasps in the minute it takes to exit the wreck. Unfortunately, her ankle did not land well either, but she tries her best to ignore her limp.  
The trio sprint down the streets towards the helicarrier, civilians running the opposite way and screams ripping through the smoky air. The group are forced to stop however, by the sight that greets them in the sky.

The low, grumbling roar of the portal grows louder, and to Natasha’s horror, so does the gaping hole in the sky. Out of it, slithers a gargantuan, serpent-like metal creature. It makes the terrifying beasts they had previously fought look like flies. Natasha can’t even tell if it is alive. All she can see are the metal plates that protect it. Is there any breathing being beneath that?

Its size is no match for the narrow New York streets and its wings, arms, whatever they are, smash statues and windows alike as it travels through the air over their heads. The three heroes’ eyes follow it as it passes them. More Chitauri beings launch out of the underbelly and sides of the snake-like thing, attaching to the side of buildings and on the top of cars. 

They are vastly outnumbered. 

“Stark, you seeing this?” Captain America calls into his com. 

“Seeing. Still, working on believing.” Tony replies, zooming through the skies towards the metal snake. “Where’s Banner, has he shown up yet?”

“Banner?” Steve asks in confusion. 

“Just keep me posted.” Tony instructs before disengaging his intercom.

* * *

When Steve next sees Natasha, he joins her and Clint in diving for cover behind a taxi. 

“We’ve got civilians trapped-" Clint begins, but a Chitauri transport ship soars overhead, beams of blue _Tesseract_ energy blasting left and right from it, unlike anything they have seen so far. The sites where it burst into flames, people running to avoid the hits. 

“Loki.” Steve states, not that everyone didn’t already know. 

The Asgardian bolts down the street in his transport, mercilessly blasting everything in sight and leaving mushroom clouds of smoke and flame behind him. Steve doesn’t want to know how many people could be dead. 

“They’re fish in a barrel down there.” Steve describes, looking down at the wreckage from the bridge him and the others have sought refuge on. 

Black Widow stands up and fires two shots at the oncoming Chitauri with guns in both hands, while Clint moves to a separate advantage point, readying his quiver. A gathering of Chitauri continue to sneak towards them, and Natasha and Clint both eye them determinedly. 

Natasha turns to Steve, who is torn in wanting to stay by Natasha and needing to do his civil duty as Captain America. “We got this. It’s okay. Go.” She reassures him, as though reading his mind and his consequent doubts. He hesitates, before nodding once.

“You think you can hold ‘em off?” he exclaims across the distance to Clint. 

“Captain, it would be my genuine pleasure.” he smiles slyly, before jumping up and shooting one of the creatures in the head with his arrows. Now convinced that they do, in fact ‘have it’, Cap jumps up and escapes the scene of Widow and Hawkeye firing shots of arrows and bullets, leaping over the edge of the bridge. 

As he lands on the roof of a large bus, he can feel the blasts from the sceptre being fired close behind him. He is forced to roll as he collides with the surface of the bus, just barely missing the blows of energy from Loki. Just in time, he leaps from the bus and onto the roof of another car, before that one is instantly upturned, sending him flying through the air _again_. Flames lick at the back of him as he rolls in the air, landing on the ground, finally, and sprints away as fast as he can. 

Back on the bridge, Natasha holds off the Chitauri with her pistol while Clint helps trapped passengers of a packed bus to escape through the windows. Once all the people have safety escaped, he joins her in taking down the monsters ahead of them. 

“Just like Budapest all over again!” Natasha yells over cacophony of shots of guns firing and growls of the falling monsters.

“You and I remember Budapest very differently!” Clint calls back slightly concerned with the nonchalant nature of Natasha’s recollection. 

Meanwhile, Captain America is leaping over cars and trucks alike, bounding across the wreckage littering the streets towards where he knows the gathering of police are pointlessly shooting at the Chitauri flitting past over their heads. _Idiots barely know how to shoot a gun. I had more training going into the army, and these guys are supposed to be keeping people safe!_

He lands on a car in front of two men who look to be in charge. “We need men in these buildings,” he says, pointing to the ones he means. “There are people inside and they’re going to be running straight into the line of fire. You take the through the basement, or through the subway, you keep them _off the streets._. I need a perimeter as far back as… 39th.” He finished.

“Why the hell should we take orders from you?” the ignorant police officer asks rudely. Steve gets a flashback to his first months as Captain America in World War II. _Because I’m Captain America…duh._

But before he can answer, a swarm of Chitauri come rocketing round the corner behind him and destroy a car, sending a cloud of flames and smoke into the air. The officers back away terrified, but Steve stands his ground. He blocks a blast sent from one of their weapons and launches into action as a few of them attack him standing on his car. He defends every blast thrown at him by the Chitauri and smashes their armour with his shield, sending them falling to the ground. When one attempts to grab him, he slices its limb off with the metal of his shield, flinging the body away and looks at the men again, the limb still dangling from his other hand. The officer jumps into action, initiating the same orders Steve had literally just demanded they perform.

Natasha briefly sees Iron Man fleeing the huge metal serpent-like thing in the distance before jumping another Chitauri monster and tackling it to the ground. Next to her, Clint spears another one with an arrow, straight though the middle of the chest. Leaping onto the shoulders of a howling monster, she paralyses it with a Widow Bite, its machine body sizzling and crackling before it crumples. But they just keep coming. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Clint slammed to the ground by one, as two more attack her and she has to disarm one of its weapon to use against its comrade. They are getting extremely close now, drawing in, and just as she begins to feel doubt well in her chest, she sees a flash of red, white and blue dropping into the midst and is relieved. Cap’s here. He uses his shield to defend them, but just at that moment, rods of lightning penetrate every single one of the creatures from up high, as Thor arrives on the scene. The monsters simultaneously collapse as he drops to the ground and walks towards them. 

“What’s the story upstairs?” Steve doesn’t hesitate to ask, meeting him in the middle.

“The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable.” 

“Thor’s right, we gotta deal with these guys.” Tony’s voice comes from on high.

Natasha turns to Steve, the leader. In her eyes, anyway. “How do we do this?”

“As a team.” Is Steve’s immediate response, but Thor cuts in. 

“I have unfinished business with Loki.”

“Yeah, well get in line.” Clint calls from the outskirts of the group, readjusting his arrows. 

“Save it.” Steve says irritably. “Loki’s gonna keep this fight focused on us and that’s what we need. Without him these things could run wild.” 

Steve begins to patrol the street, and the others follow him. He turns around and gestures up to Stark tower.

“We got Stark up top. He’s gonna need us-"

But the sputtering of an engine interrupts him, and he turns to see Bruce Banner on a motorcycle trundling towards them really quite pathetically. He dismounts the bike and moves to meet Steve and the group in the middle. Natasha keeps a safe distance behind Steve, her throbbing ribs a reminder of just how unpredictable this man can be. His aura reeks of distrust.

“So, this all seems…horrible.” he gestures to the absolute carnage surrounding them. 

“I’ve seen worse.” Natasha snaps dryly, referencing to their last encounter. He makes eye contact with her.

“Sorry,” he begins, but Natasha reassures him.

“No, we could use… a little worse.”

“Stark, we got him. Banner. Just like you said.” Steve speaks into his com. 

“Then tell him to suit up. I’m bringing the party to you.”

And just then, Iron Man comes rocketing around a corner towards them, barely ahead of the huge metal serpent that comes crashing after him. The group around Steve’s eyes all widen, and they square up in anticipation to meet this great beast.

“I, I don’t see how that’s a party.” Natasha says, an edge of humour in her voice, and Steve wants to laugh, but doesn't.

As the machine comes rapidly towards them, leading a trail of destruction behind it, Bruce steps away and advances in the direction towards the monster.

“Dr Banner,” Steve calls after him. “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

“That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry.” he says mildly, before morphing horrifyingly smoothly into the grand form of the Hulk, just as the serpent machine reaches them. The collision makes a long, drawn out, crunching sound, as Hulk holds out a fist against the nose of the creature. 

However, to Natasha’s horror, the thing flips up, its height dwarfing even the tallest skyscrapers, as begins its descent _towards the ground where they stand._ It takes her about a second to work out Stark’s tactic however, as as it hovers on the invisible fulcrum between falling and rising, Tony blasts its underbelly, obviously a weak spot, and the machine explodes.

Steve’s arm wraps around Natasha in a second and pulls her under his shield as parts of the metal beast rain down on them from on high. She can feel his breath on her neck in their closeness as debris hits the shield they both crouch beneath and bounces off. His arm is held tight around her waist, holding her steady, and she is frozen the entire time. Thankfully her back is turned, so Steve can’t see the blush creeping up Natasha’s cheeks. It’s not like her to get this flustered over anyone, and she can’t let him know how he makes her feel. No, she won’t say a word. 

The main body of the beast falls over them and off the bridge the other side, crushing several taxis and cars under its weight. But its dead, that’s for sure. And all around them, the remaining Chitauri creatures growl and roar in anguish as their house, their central network, is demolished. 

The six heroes get to their feet and draw in to each other, backs first as the Chitauri leap into action around them. 

Bruce Banner / The Hulk,  
Clint Barton/ Hawkeye,  
Thor Odinson/ God of Thunder,  
Natasha Romanoff/ The Black Widow,  
Steve Rogers/ Captain America,  
Tony Stark/ Iron Man.

Together, united, as one. At last.

The Avengers have finally assembled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (For those who don’t know, the yoke is the equivalent of a steering wheel for a plane or aircraft. Can also be called a control wheel.)  
> Also I felt like I was being really mean to Bruce in this chapter so I’m sorry about that I do like him really but him and Natasha was just WRONG I’m sorry, and if you disagree you are on the WRONG fic honey.


	9. This is a Love/Hate Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorrysorrysorrysorry I know this took so long to get up, but I mean come on! It's part 2 of the Battle of New York and it's word count is over twice as much as any other chapter! It was a big one!  
> There will be one more chapter on the first movie after this, and then we're on to Book 2! The Winter Soldier...

LoveHate Thing – Sam Dew (ARVFZ Remix)

Location: MID-TOWN MANHATTEN, 40.7549° N, 73.9840° W  
Date: 05/26/2012

The roars from the raging Chitauri fill the air, their cries blending together to form a horrific, unnatural, ear-shattering melody that rings in Natasha, Steve and the rest of the Avengers’ ears. Up high, the hole becomes their main problem, as out of it emerges several more of the ginormous metal creatures they had just struggled so much to defeat. Natasha sees it first, and draws the others’ attention to it.

“Guys,” As everyone else’s eyes are drawn towards the skies, Iron Man tells Steve,

“Call it Captain.” Guess he is the leader now.

“Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash.” Steve commands forcefully, his voice booming.

“Will you give me a lift?” Clint asks Iron Man.

“Right. Better clench up Legolas.” Stark says before walking over to Clint, grabbing him, and the two go rocketing into the air and out of sight within seconds.

“Thor, you gotta try and bottleneck that portal, slow ‘em down. You got the lightning, light the bastards up.”

Thor nods once before ascending into the air and up towards Stark tower. That leaves him Natasha and the Hulk. He wants Natasha with him but the Hulk’s strength could be beneficial elsewhere.

“You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here.” Natasha nods, not breaking eye contact with him. Steve turns to hulk. “And Hulk?”

The big green rage monster spins to face him. Steve points to the sky. “Smash.”

Hulk smiles with the happiest, and simultaneously evillest, look Steve has ever seen the cross someone like the Hulk’s face, and he jumps into the air, going farther than anyone else on earth could with a single bending of the knees.

He lands about three quarters of the way up a monumental skyscraper, ripping the Chitauri monsters off the side with ease, like a child playing with their dolls, before leaping to another building and another, and another.

As the fighting goes on, with both Cap and Widow taking down each creature as they come, waves of blue lightning crackle through the sky, setting the very air around Natasha alight. She can feel its electricity on her skin, cold and unnatural. She puts up with it though, because Thor has managed to indeed bottleneck the portal, and taken down a good few serpent machines along with a couple dozen Chitauri with it.

In the midst of her own battles, Natasha also sees Clint and Tony working together to lead Chitauri across Hawkeye and trap them, Hulk diverting a serpent machine from impaling a huge building, and Thor landing a few streets down where another army of Chitauri has landed. They are doing good work, and despite the blows she has landed to the head along with multiple cuts, she is confident in her fighting, and determination spurs her onward.

However, she is brought harshly back to earth, literally, when a Chitauri slams her with brute force onto the bonnet of a taxi. Pain floods her chest again, but she ignores it, dodging a dive at her head from the Chitauri and throwing a leg over its shoulder, using it to hoist herself up and plunge a Widow Bite into its neck. She screams out loud in the effort and as the Chitauri throws her back down onto the hard metal surface. Luckily, she manages to disarm the Chitauri of its weapon and uses it to blast it backwards, incinerating it instantly. She whirls to behind her where she had sensed another presence, ready to attack, but finds Cap, finished with his battles and come to see whether she needed any help.

He holds his shield up hesitantly, confused as to why she has poised to attack, but when she lowers her weapon he rushes closer. She collapses back down on the bonnet of the taxi, exhausted and trying to catch her breath. The two rest for a brief moment, before Natasha speaks up.

“Being Captain on this ain’t gonna mean a damn thing if we don’t close that portal.”

“Our biggest guns couldn’t touch it.” Steve states as the two gaze up at the dark blue shimmering portal against the pale blue sky.

“Well, maybe it’s not about guns.” Natasha says rather fast, her brain obviously working double speed. In her concentration she doesn’t see Steve look over at her with a look of both disbelief and admiration on his face, before he catches sight of more Chitauri sneaking towards them from the north.

“You wanna get up there, you’re gonna need a ride.”

“I got a ride,” she says, discarding the Chitauri weapon in her hands and walking to the other side of the bridge. “Could use a boost though!” she calls behind her.

Again, Steve understands instantly, inexplicably, what she means. He backs up, holding his shield up, positioning it above and in front of him. “Sure about this?” he asks concernedly. This could go wrong in a little too many ways for Steve to be comfortable with it.

“Yeah... it’s gonna be fun.” she says, more trying to convince herself than Steve. She takes a running jump, first jumping onto a car, and then onto Steve’s shield. He takes her weight and launches her into the air, where she twists and grabs hold to the edge of a flying Chitauri transport zooming overhead, elegantly hitching her ride.

Steve watches her go, in awe. That son of a bitch did it. She really did it.

Dangling from the ship, Natasha is indeed ‘doing it’. She swings from the back of the ship as it speeds through the streets, struggling to keep a hold. Managing to pull herself up and onto the ship, she whips out a knife, slicing through the chains that attach the Chitauri pilot to the dash and kicking him off into the streets below.  
Struggling to stay aboard the careering ship, she heaves herself further towards the head of the chariot-style compartment, where another Chitauri steers the ship-like thing. With one last pull, she leaps into the air and lands on the shoulders of the Chitauri creature, crouching on it as she stabs two Widow Bites into the what-would-have-been shoulder blades of the creature, effectively controlling it. She uses her control to steer the ship round a corner, shouting “Turn, turn!” as she narrowly missing the edge of a building, sending rubble into the streets below.

She feels another ship approach her from behind, shooting at her, but at almost the same time, Stark appears and blasts the ship and Chitauri manning it out of the sky. She makes a mental note to thank him later, if she has the time. She watches Tony descend to where she had left Steve fighting the remainder of the Chitauri. She feels a pang of guilt about abandoning him, but she has a bigger mission in hand. As if the thought had reminded her, she swerves down the next left and makes a round to Stark tower.

Back below on the bridge, Steve is assisted by Tony in defeating a number of the Chitauri, even using Tony’s blasts to ricochet off Steve’s shield at one point, taking out numerous monsters in a single continuous beam of energy, before Tony ascends into the air again.

Around New York City, each Avenger can be seen destroying numerous Chitauri, transport ships and humongous metal serpents alike, often with another Avenger to assist them. Clint and Tony, working together to scout and take down strays, The Hulk and Thor, taking down a metal serpent that crashes into Grand Central, Steve making use of his teammates strengths to take down the monsters, and Natasha assisted by them all on her journey up to Stark tower. It’s the first time they have truly, truly been a team. Worked together. Came together, and became something more.

Meanwhile, Cap has been reported to a situation on 42nd street where a number of Chitauri have corned members of the public inside. There was a bomb of some kind, an explosive, and Steve finally managed to temporarily disable the monsters, but the bomb still went off when one of the monsters lobbed it him. It threw him out of a window and flying through the air until he landed, very hard, on the top of a car. Stomach first too. At least that freaking helmets gone, though. he notes as he wheezes the air back into his lungs. It’s true, in the struggle, his helmet had been ripped off, releasing his messy, grubby and tousled hair. He grimaces as rises off the car and slips to the ground. Surveying the scene before him, a well of disappointment, failure, helplessness fills up inside him. How long is this going to go on for?, he thinks.

Up in the air, Natasha is being pursued by Loki in his transport. She dips and dives to avoid the sharp shoots of blue that barely miss her each time.

“Hawkeye!” she calls into her com. He looks in disbelief at her distant figure on the transport rocketing towards him, unable to believe that is it Natasha.

“Nat, what are you doing?”

“Uh…a little help!” she exclaims, ducking from another blast from Loki.

Clint takes aim at the pinprick figures in the distant, narrowing in on Loki’s greenish-yellow silhouette.

“I got him.” he confirms, before letting the arrow fly. It shoots towards Loki, and he catches it in his hand. Clint looks in shock at Loki, who makes eye contact with him and grins evilly. But then the arrow explodes.

Loki is sent bowling through the air, his ship colliding with the Stark sign and demolishing the beginning of it, before Loki lands heavily on the terrace / runway of Stark’s highest floor. Natasha relinquishes her grip on the Chitauri creature just as they pass over the top of Stark tower, flipping gracefully over in the air and landing in the gravel roof on Stark’s building. She rolls a couple times to lose the momentum of her landing, before slowly getting to her feet.

Before her stands a huge, shining, glimmering force field of energy not unlike the kind Loki shoots from his sceptre. It is surrounded, dwarfed by metal machinery that organises the Tesseract into a neat little pocket between the two poles of metal. As she draws towards it, a voice calls towards her from the other side of the roof.

“The sceptre.”

She turns to see Selvig, the scientist, lying half over the edge of the roof.

“Doctor.” she goes over to him and crouches down.

“Loki’s sceptre. The energy… the Tesseract can’t fight… you can’t protect against yourself.” he yells over the whirring, high pitched humming.

“It’s not your fault, you didn’t know what you were doing.” Natasha reassures the scientist.

He looks steadily on at her. “Why should I think I did?” Natasha tilts her head, confused. “I built in a safety to cut the power source.”

It dawns on Natasha. “Loki’s sceptre.”

“It may be able to close the portal…and I’m looking right at it.” He turns back over to the edge of the building. Natasha stands and sees, over his shoulder, the sceptre lying in the middle of the terrace where Loki had landed in his crash, looking so innocent and yet knowing if so many different kind of evils that it undermines Natasha just by looking at it.

But still, around the city of New York, the Avengers are struggling. The ratio of Chitauri compared to their capabilities of taking them down is vastly mismatched, and each Avenger is struggling to succeed in their battles alone. The serpent like creatures, which Natasha only now learns are called Leviathans, are wreaking havoc on an incomparable scale to the buildings and lives taking place in New York. Even Tony’s trick of flying through the body of one Leviathan to explode it only barely works, before he is surrounded by Chitauri attackers again. Meanwhile, back on the helicarrier docked in a bay of Manhattan, an unauthorised take-off has occurred, the pilot of which carries a missile intended for the city of New York. The council have undermined Fury and are attempting to blow the entirety of New York up in order to contain the invasion. All attempts to stop it have failed, and now it is heading straight for central Manhattan, detonation 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Natasha helps the doctor to his feet, proceeding to scale down the building and retrieve the sceptre, before returning to the roof with it. The doctor is opening some sort of high tech computer, fiddling with the knobs and dials and when she holds up the sceptre, he points to the shimmering force field around the Tesseract.

“Right at the crown!”

She obeys, touching it gently at first, before plunging, forcing it through the blockade. The barrier protests, sparks flying every which way, and Natasha flinches as one comes her direction, but she perseveres.

When she is close to the bright blowing centre where the Tesseract hovers, she halts, unsure of whether to proceed. “I can close it.” she pants into her intercom with the effort of holding the sceptre in place. “Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down.”

Down on the streets, Steve engages instantly. “Do it!”

“No, wait.” comes Tony’s voice.

“Stark, these things are still coming!”

“I got a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute.”

The others can hear the static of Iron Man’s suit soaring though the windy air, presumably following the nuke. “And I know just where to put it.”

The portal.

“Stark, you know that’s a one way trip.” Steve says quietly. A sombre curtain of silence falls over the intercoms. Tony Stark is not that man they once though he was.

“Save the rest for the turn, J.” Tony jokes, always the smartass.

Everything freezes, as the Avengers watch Tony enter the centre of New York, the missile above his head, climbing and climbing into the air, towards the portal.  
It’s like the whole world is still.

But then he goes in, and New York is safe, and will not be blown up today. Relief floods a small portion of the Avengers, but concern for their teammate overrides it.  
Up in the portal, Tony lets go of the nuke and it goes flying straight into the main ship that houses the entire Chitauri army. The explosion can be seen reflected in Tony’s desperate, hopeless eyes, just before they close. His machine fails, and he falls. But it’s a long way down.

The Avengers stand in New York, every one’s eyes on the portal above Stark tower, of which now only the ‘A’ of Stark remains. “Come on, Stark.” Natasha whispers pleadingly. But he doesn’t show.

Steve’s eyes fall to the ground. “Close it.” he tells Natasha. So she does.

Jabbing the sceptre right into the centre of the tesseract, she cries out, and one last beam of energy shoots up into the portal, before stopping altogether. The sky almost seems to roll in on itself, the portal shrinking and shrinking, shutting out the world, shutting out Tony. However, just as it is close to sealing completely, Tony’s body in his armour comes shooting out of it, falling out of the sky.

Happiness surges through all the Avengers as he appears again, but it quickly turns to anxiety and worry, as he doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

“He’s not slowing down!” Thor shouts, wielding his hammer and preparing to fly, but there is no need. The Hulk’s ginormous body comes rocketing out of nowhere and scoops Tony out the sky, leaping from building to building before landing on the ground, cradling Tony in his arms. Steve and Thor rush over, turning Tony onto his back and removing his faceplate. Tony’s eyes are closed, and Steve doesn’t hear any breathing. He begins to presume the worst, as Tony lies still before them. Steve leans back on his feet, feeling a kind of defeat never experienced before. The Hulk clenches his fists, raging, and then bellows in Tony’s face. Incredibly, miraculously, Tony jerks awake with a gasp, shouting in shock. Steve’s face lights up. He’s alive.

The Hulk roars again, louder, pummelling his chest.  
“What the hell!” he surveys the relieved, euphoric looks on the faces around him. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.”

Steve almost smiles, panting in exhaustion, and looking up to Stark tower where Natasha still resides. He nods victoriously, gently. “We won.”

Tony closes his eyes and sighs, abated and relieved. “Alright, heyy. Alright, good jobs guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just…take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here.” Steve chuckles, shaking his head. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

“We’re not finished yet.” Thor says dejectedly, referring to his brother. There is a silence.

“And then shawarma after?”

After fetching Clint from another street and Natasha from the roof, Steve and the rest of the Avengers enter the top floor of Stark tower, where Loki is crawling pathetically up a couple stairs. When he senses them, he turns around and is greeted with quite a remarkable sight. All the Avengers, assembled in a neat arrangement, Hawkeye’s arrow pointed straight at his face. All of them have really quite deadly expressions on their face. It’s time to give up.

“Get him on his feet.” Tony tells Steve. “We can all stand around posing up a storm later. By the way, feel free to clean up!”

The group disperses, Natasha wielding Loki’s sceptre. “Who gets the, uh, magic wand?”

“Strike team’s coming to secure it.” Steve explains as the Strike team enter at that very moment.

“We can take that off your hands.” Jasper Sitwell says to Natasha, gently taking the sceptre off her and admiring it with hungry eyes.

“By all means.” Natasha says, and she walks away, but not before calling over her shoulder. “Be careful with that thing!” To which Sitwell flinches, as he had been fiddling with the tip of the sceptre greedily.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees as they open the case and slip it inside. “Unless you want your mind erased, and not the fun way.”

“We promise to be careful.” Rumlow assures, clipping the case shut.

Steve passes the group, speaking into his intercom. “On my way down to coordinate search and rescue.”

Loki transforms into Steve and imitates him in a mocking voice. “On my way down to coordinate search and rescue.” And then morphs back into his own skin. “I mean honestly! How do you keep your-" Thor brings out an advanced gag-type contraption which he slaps onto Loki’s mouth, effectively silencing him.

“Shut up.” he growls.

The three Avengers Thor, Tony and the Hulk follow Steve, Nat and Clint down to the ground floor in the elevator where they had gone to scout out a shawarma joint as well as organise search and rescue.

When the six are reunited again, they enter the ravaged shawarma restaurant somewhat half-heartedly. The Hulk has now become Bruce, and Tony has de-suited.  
They take a seat around a large table in the centre of the chaos, and soon enough their food arrives on the table. Natasha kicks her legs up and rests them across Steve’s lap, reaching for a chicken shawarma wrap. Steve barely looks up.  
The Avengers are tired, barely even having enough energy to eat, let alone make conversation, and so they sit in silence, munching on their food, reasonably content with their good days work.

Moments like this are rare, and Natasha makes sure to value it, them being together, like a team around the table like this. Like a team, but also like a family, which is something Natasha has never had. She smiles a small smile, picking up another shawarma wrap, and digs in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also you know the big Avengers pose in front of Loki? The scene after that in this is actually from the time heist in Endgame where they go back, and I like to think I was really clever by remembering that that scene exists and not just making it up so yes i will take credit for that thank u all ;)


	10. I've Got Things I've Left Unsaid – Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of Book 1!  
> 10 Chapters,10 days, 1 movie.  
> Now onto the next one, I guess...
> 
> Please please leave a comment if you enjoyed this book and want another one, it really does do wonders for a writer's inspiration!

Seasons – Greyson Chance 

Location: CENTRAL PARK, NYC, 40.7829° N, 73.9654° W  
Date: 05/29/2012

Central Park is flooded by sunlight. The birds circle overhead, singing a jumble of tunes in different keys that mix together to form a long, extended string of melodies. A gentle breeze sifts through the warm air as Natasha gets out of the car, a wide smile on her face. Something flashes in the distance but she ignores it. It’s like she can still hear the news that had blared nonstop for the entire few days after the Battle of New York.

“Despite the devastation, of what has been confirmed as the result of an extraterrestrial attack, the extraordinary heroics of the group known as the Avengers has been a cause not only for comfort, but for celebration.”

“Nah, it’s just… really great knowing they’re out there, you know? Someone’s watching over us.”

“I love you Thor!”

“I don’t know, I don’t exactly feel safer with those things out there…”

“It just seems that there’s a lot they’re not telling us.”

“Superheroes in New York? Gimme a break…”

“These so-called heroes have to be held responsible for the destruction done to this city. This was _their_ fight. Where are they now?” 

“Tough questions are being asked about the Avengers themselves, their sudden appearance, and equally sudden disappearance.”

“What, that this is all somehow their fault? Captain America saved my life. Wherever he is, and wherever any of them are, I would just…I would wanna say thank you.”

Natasha sees the rest of the Avengers, dismounting from their various vehicles and all heading towards the centre of a large monument on the bridge. Two security guards man the perimeter, making sure no one makes it too close. She sees Steve coming from her right, along with Bruce, while Clint stays close on her left. Tony, in his suit, carries the case with the Tesseract, while Thor has a tight grip on Loki, bound and gagged, and pushes him forward into the centre.

Erik Selvig unloads the Tesseract from a large grey van parked at the edge of the bridge and Tony helps Bruce place it into a long golden and glass cylinder. Steve looks on with a fierce glare. Thor says goodbye to Selvig with a pat on the shoulder, while Loki scowls around at all of them. Steve sees Natasha out of the corner of his eye lean over and whisper something into Clint’s ear, which he grins at.

Up in the helicarrier, Fury is confronted by the council.

“Where are the Avengers?”

“I’m not currently tracking their whereabouts. I’d say they’ve earned a leave of absence.” he smirks knowingly.

“And the Tesseract?”

“The Tesseract is where it belongs, out of our reach.”

“That’s not your call.” a female voice drones.

“I didn’t make it. I just didn’t argue with the god that did.”

“So you let him take it, and the war criminal Loki who should be answering for his crimes.”

“Oh, I think he will be.” Fury smiles again.

With one strict nod at the Avengers, Thor twists the handle of the cylindrical case both him and Loki have a hand on, and the two vanish in a thick electric beam of Tesseract energy, sucked up and into the air.

Along the bridge, each Avenger splits off into pairs or alone to pursue their own personal missions. Tony and Bruce will be heading back to the Stark tower, now renamed the Avengers tower, to help rebuild the devastation taken out on the building. Steve will be heading to Washington, DC to pursue a life he once hoped to lead and find out what he missed along the way, and Clint was to head home to his family, wife and two kids, Natasha along with him. 

“I don’t think you understand what you’ve started, letting the Avengers loose on this world. They’re dangerous.”

“They surely are. And the whole world knows it. Every, world, knows it.” Fury assures, letting a slip of authority enter his voice.

“Was that the point of all this? A statement?” Another official asks. 

“A promise.”

Steve shakes Tony’s hand, clapping him on his arm reassuringly and smiling. The two men share a last goodbye before Tony gets into a swanky looking new car. After handing Bruce his luggage, Natasha watches him get into the car with Tony and zoom off into the distance. Steve, Natasha and Clint are left. After a wave at Steve, Clint gets into the car him and Natasha will drive away in, leaving just the two of them left. Natasha walks over to where Steve stands.

“So, what are you going to do, down there in DC?” Natasha asks, her hands slipping into her back pockets as she squints up at Steve.

“I don’t exactly know yet… Probably do a lot of catching up mostly. Seventy years in the ice tends to make you shabby on some things.” Steve replies, looking down at Natasha with a smile. 

They fall into silence, and it’s like they’re back on the helicarrier, staring at each other with so much to say and all of it sitting unsaid in the air between them. Like everything Natasha wanted to say somehow got lost on the way to her mouth. She nods gently, never breaking eye contact with him. 

“You have fun down there.” she tells him, and then there is a long pause. “I’ll see you around, soldier.”

Steve smiles back at her remark, before following, “I look forward to it, spy.”

The two share one last look, before Natasha returns to her car, Steve to the motorcycle he will be riding down to Washington on, and they both depart, leaving each other behind, for good.

Outside the control room, Nick Fury meets with Maria Hill on the bridge of the helicarrier. 

“Sir, how does it work now? They’ve gone their separate ways. Some, pretty extremely far. We get into a situation like this again, what happens then?” Hill asks Fury as he approaches the large window, staring out of it.

“They’ll come back.”

“You really sure about that?” Fury’s back is turned to Hill, but he can feel her steady gaze. 

“I am.” 

Hill pauses. “Why?”

“Because we’ll need them to.”

And with that, the Avengers, once assembled, spread out across the country, perhaps far enough to have peace of mind, but never too far. After all, when the world needed saving, there were never six people better suited to do it, than the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are.  
> Wow, I feel nostalgic.  
> If I’m honest I wanted a better ending for Steve and Nat than the one I gave them, but they still are in denial about their feelings, and will be reuniting soon anyway, as those of you who have watched The Winter Soldier will know… so we will see them then!  
> Goodbye!  
> 


	11. You'll Know How It Feels to Want You and Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BOOK 2 OF LOST IN TRANSLATION - MOVIE: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
> 
> It has been two short years since Nick Fury paired Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers together to complete missions as a team under S.H.I.E.L.D. In this passing time, they have grown close as partners, even confiding in each other their secrets, and are now almost inseparable. Everything changes, however, when S.H.I.E.L.D is compromised and Steve doesn’t know who to trust and who to tell but either way, it doesn’t matter, because nothing stays a secret for long, and Steve is going to need Natasha more than ever…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have the beginning of Book 2!  
> This story picks up when Steve is struggling to settle in to modern-day life, and is dealing with feelings of isolation and of having no place in the world. But when Fury recruits him and Natasha to be a team she saves him in more ways than one and becomes his only true friend in what fast becomes a world of lies. 
> 
> I'm so excited for this book, you don't even understand.  
> Things are really going to start happening now...
> 
> Hello to my silent readers! I see you and appreciate you!  
> So, without further ado... here we go!

Count Me in – Early Winters

LOCATION: WASHINGTON DC, 38.9072° N, 77.0369° W  
DATE(s): 06/11/2012 - 09/24/2014

That morning, Steve is awake to see the sun rise. The blinds are open in his DC apartment, and it slices the sunlight into thin golden sheets as it enters the room, setting his whole room an orange-yellow glow. 

Steve himself is sitting on the bed, facing the open blinds and the broadening horizon. His body stills in the peaceful haze that early morning has on him, eyes fixed out of his window. However still his body may be though, his mind is alive. The nightmares had kept him up last night, and they haunt him even now. It hadn't been one month since the Battle of New York, a year since he had emerged from the ice, and he woke in a cold sweat every time. 

Rubbing his bleary eyes, Steve heads into the kitchen, fetching a carton of orange juice from the fridge and filling a glass. He sips it silently as he gazes out into the distance. 

Steve’s apartment is remarkably _open_. The design makes it so his sizeable double bed, the thin white sheets a tangled mess upon it, lies in an aside room facing the open city of Washington, but everything else is combined, jumbled, in an organised mishmash of furniture in an adjacent room. The narrow kitchen, with its hatch open to the joint living room and dining room, the bathroom, down the hall, too open, stretched and spacious. Everything looks so small from the outside, but inside it couldn’t be larger. And Steve loves it. He’d like to think he lucked out getting an apartment like this in the centre of Washington but he suspects that more than luck was at play. After all, are you just supposed to refuse Captain America your apartment? I think not. 

Despite the fact that it must be something like six in the morning, Steve’s phone vibrates on his nightstand. He ambles over to it sluggishly, placing his glass of orange juice on the stand as he picks up his phone.

The message is from Nick Fury.

_Need you at The Triskelion ASAP. Pack for a trip._

Steve’s heart sinks. He hadn’t even gotten a month’s break from S.H.I.E.L.D and Nick was already reeling him in for missions. Chucking the phone onto his bed, he collapses backwards after it with a sigh. Lying on his back, he can see every faded stain and dent in the ceiling. Briefly, he wonders what caused all those imperfections, suddenly getting lost in a kaleidoscope of scenarios where there are loud arguments and beer bottles being thrown at the wall, science experiments going wrong and liquids hitting the ceiling at alarming rates, shouting that makes the very ground tremble, and more. Surrendering to the fact that his summer holiday is over, he pulls himself up and tugs his v-neck off, beginning to get dressed.

* * *

That had been the day Fury had called them in. 

When Steve had arrived at the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters later that morning, he had found Natasha Romanoff already there. She had travelled from Missouri, where Clint had resided with his family, unbeknownst to Steve. It had been the first time he had seen her in almost a month, and he was star-struck, just like the very first time he had laid eyes on her on the helicarrier. He had greeted her with a smile and a wave before Nick had dropped the bombshell.  
They would be paired together as a team in missions from now on. Natasha would no longer work with Clint. She would work with Steve.  
To Steve’s surprise, Natasha hadn’t protested the idea, or demanded to stay working with Clint. She had simply nodded once and asked if Nick had a mission for them yet. When he had informed her that he did not in fact have a mission for them, she just said ‘okay’, and patted Steve on the arm with a “I’ll see you then, soldier.”, before leaving the room. Steve had goggled after her before quickly excusing himself and following her out of the room.

That had been over two years ago. Now it was the fall of 2014, and Steve saw Natasha almost every day. They had completed countless missions together and made an elite team, constantly knowing what the other wanted to say or do before they moved or articulated a word. They had also grown closer, developing an intimate, platonic relationship outside of their jobs, but never going further, both fearfully treading the line of no return, of a kiss that would be a catalyst for an explosion of stifled feelings.  
Natasha had taken Steve sight-seeing around DC and other major cities, helping him catch up on everything he had missed. They would go out for drinks in the evening, end up stumbling back to Steve’s apartment in the early morning and falling asleep drunk on the couch or on Steve’s messy bed. They were friends. That was the simple word.  
In a time where Steve had never felt more alone, Natasha was the one who had handed him the lifeline, who had hoisted him out of his pit of isolation. They had unleashed their insecurities into one another, letting down all their barriers, allowing themselves to be supported, and Steve had benefited greatly from it. 

He now called her Nat.

By the time September of 2014 comes around, they have become an inseparable, untouchable team. Which was just what Fury had wanted.  
When Steve goes out on his runs at six am in the morning and the sun floods the sky with new colours every time, he is reminded of that morning. The morning that changed everything. Even when he had nothing, he had Nat. And that was good enough for him.

As September progresses, a stranger joins him on his runs. He frequently overlaps this strange man, and on the morning of September the twenty-forth, where everything changes for the worse, it is no different. 

The first time he laps him, across a bridge underneath pink and purple sky, Steve calls “On your left!” to the man, who nods in acknowledgment and smiles politely. The second time, in front of a monumental stone museum building, he repeats his phrase, to which the runner assents, “Uh huh, on my left.”  
On the third time he laps him, the sun is just risen, and he passes him before several flights of wide stone stairs. When the jogger hears Steve coming, he calls, “Don’t say it! Don’t you say it!”, but Steve jokily says it anyway.

“On your left.” 

The runner groans and yells “Come on!”, attempting to catch up to Steve, but the latter is already miles ahead.

Later, Steve finds the man collapsed against a tree trunk, sweat patches blotching his grey sweater and panting heavily.

“Need a medic?” he asks, approaching him and grinning. The man laughs.

“Need a new set of lungs. Dude, you just ran, like, thirteen miles in thirty minutes.”

“Guess I got a late start.” Steve jokes. The jogger humours Steve with a chuckle.

“Really? You should be ashamed of yourself, you should take another lap.” he looks away, breathless and when he looks back he glances Steve up and down. “Did you just take it? I assume you just took it.”

Steve gestures to the sweater the man wears and the emblem plastered across the left breast. “What unit you with?”

“58th pararescue, but now I’m workin’ down at the VA.” he pauses. “Sam Wilson.” He holds out a hand, and Steve grasps it, using it to pull Wilson up to his feet.  
“Steve Rogers.” he states.

“Yeah, I kinda put that together.” he says, resting his hands on his knees and hunching over briefly before straightening up. “Musta freaked you out comin’ home, after the whole defrostin’ thing.” 

“Takes some getting used to.” Steve admits. “It’s good to meet you, Sam.”

He begins to walk away, but Sam calls after him. “It’s your bed, right?” 

“What’s that?” Steve asks, turning to face him.

“Your bed, it’s too soft. When I was over there. I’d sleep on the ground, use rocks for pillows like a caveman. Now I’m home, ‘lying in my bed an’ it’s like…”

“Lying on a marshmallow. I feel like I’m gonna sink right to the floor. ”

Sam nods in agreement.

“How long?” Steve refers to his time in the military.

“Two tours.”

Steve bobs his head in acknowledgment. 

“You must miss the good ol’ days, huh?” he asks. 

“Well, things aren’t so bad. Food’s a lot better, we used to boil everything. No polio’s good... Internet! So helpful. Been reading that a lot, tryna catch up.” he explains. Sam thinks for a second, before gesturing to Steve.

“Marvin Gaye, 1972, Trouble Man soundtrack. Everything you missed, jammed into one album.” 

Steve nods appreciatively, taking out a pocket notebook and scrawling down the suggestion. “I’ll put it on the list.”

Before he can put away his notebook, his phone goes off in his pocket. When he pulls it out, he sees there is a text from Nat. 

_Mission alert. Extraction imminent. Meet at the curb. :)_

Steve smiles at her use of emojis and her knowledge of exactly where he would be at close to seven o’clock on any given morning. It's like she knows him _too_ well. 

“Alright, Sam. Duty calls. Thanks for the run, if that’s what you call running.” he teases, shaking Sam’s hand once again. 

“Oh, oh that’s how it is?” 

“Ohh that’s how it is.” Steve joshes. 

“Ohh-kay. Anytime you wanna stop by the VA, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk, just let me know.” Sam calls after Steve as he walks backwards towards the curb where he can hear the growl of Natasha’s car creeping up. 

“I’ll keep it in mind.” he assures.

Nat revs the engine of the car as it pulls up behind him. Steve turns to see her roll down the window. 

“Hey fellas. Either one of you know where The Smithsonian is, I’m here to pick up a fossil?” she calls out of it. 

“'S hilarious.” Steve replies, walking to the car and getting into the passenger seat. Nat leans forward to see Sam.

“How you doin’?” he jerks his head at her.

“Hey.” she greets him. Steve looks out of the window where Sam is crouching in the path.

“Can’t run everywhere.”

Sam grins and shakes his head. “No, you can’t.” 

The window glides up and Steve turns to face forward as Nat presses down on the accelerator and they go zooming down the road and intersperse with traffic. 

“How was your run, fossil?” Nat asks Steve as he reaches into the back of the car for the Captain America suit he knows Nat always keeps there. 

In the two years since New York, Steve and Nat had worked with Fury to make a new suit for Steve to assist in his more stealthy missions he completes with Natasha. They had succeeded extremely well and Steve now holds up his new navy suit in admiration. 

“Alright. Met Sam. He’s the guy back there. Good man. Veteran.” he comments, before tucking his suit away in the cubby where his feet lie. “So, what’s the mission?”

“It’s gonna be a long drive, I hope you don’t need the toilet.” she smirks, shifting gear as she takes a left down a high street.

“Oh no. Where are we going?” 

“The Indian Ocean.” Natasha nods approvingly at Steve’s raised eyebrows.

“Well then, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up when we reach the airport. Or... wherever we're going, you know.”

“Sure thing, old man.” Natasha smirks, as Steve huddles down in his seat, crosses his arms and tilts his head back. “Sleep tight, soldier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was interesting to write... I really wanted to write in detail about the two years in which they built their friendship but I think it would have taken way too long and I will make up for it with relationship fluff later, I promise! I really stan the idea of Nat helping Steve out of a dark place, which is really what happens here, because Natasha also knows what it feels like to feel like you have no place in the world.  
> My favourite quote: "Even when I had nothing, I had Nat."


	12. Who Do You Think Got Me This Far?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 12!  
> I just realised, this book is going be a LOT longer than 10 chapters… possibly double if it goes at the rate it is going at the moment, it’s highly possible. So I hope you guys are as dedicated as I am...  
> Enjoy!

Au Volant – Elsa & Emilie 

LOCATION(s): SCOTLAND, MARYLAND, 38.0890° N, 76.3619° W, INDIAN OCEAN, 33.1376° S, 81.8262° E  
DATE: 09/24/2014

Natasha wakes Steve up by throwing a book at his head. 

He jerks awake with a groggy yell, looking around at Natasha with a wounded expression, to which she smirks.  
“We’re nearly at the coast of Maryland. A jet’s gonna pick us up from there. Here, eat this. You haven’t had anything today.” She chucks some kind of granola-cereal bar at Steve, which lands in his lap.

Bleary eyed, he tears it open and munches on the end as the car speeds through winding country roads. The sun blinks down on them as they drive, and sure enough, when Natasha rounds a bend which opens onto a large field with the ocean beyond it, Steve sees a large Quinjet docked and waiting in the large open land. Natasha pulls up as Steve fetches his uniform from below his feet. Natasha already has her uniform on under her jacket. Of course she does. Rumlow meets them outside the jet, and they shake hands with him. He organizes for a soldier to drive Natasha’s car back to her house and the two board the ship, setting off for the Indian Ocean.  
Everything instantly becomes dark when Steve boards the ship. The minuscule windows in the jet are tinted, all the equipment painted an inky black, and as a consequence his eyesight takes a while to adjust to the dimness of the ship. Natasha and Steve buckle in for the first ten minutes while the ship gains a steady altitude, then unstrap themselves once they are safely in the air. Steve finds a corner to change into his uniform while Natasha discards and folds her jacket, and begins arming herself up with her countless weapons. Rumlow and his men in the front of the ship mutter quietly to themselves while Nat and Steve take their seats again. When they near the Indian Ocean, Rumlow will give them a briefing, but for now, they can relax and prepare for the inevitable battle.

The afternoon is nearing around when they reach the deeper parts of the ocean, and the altered time zones mean night is drawing around in this place in the middle of nowhere. This should give them an advantage. Rumlow gets a message in his com up front as his face turns grim. Once he has responded to the message, he beckons the two agents up to the front for the briefing and turns to activate a screen behind him. Steve exchanges a look with Natasha and they advance towards him together.

“Target is a mobile satellite launch platform, the Lemerian Star. They were setting up their last payload when they were attacked this morning, and then pirates took em, with hostages…93 minutes ago.” Rumlow explains, showing Natasha and Steve the diagrams and blueprints on the screen.

“Any demands?” Steve asks.

“A billion and a half.”

“Why so steep?”

“Because it’s S.H.I.E.L.D’s.” Rumlow reveals.

Steve inhales exasperatedly. “So it’s not off course, it’s a trespass.” He turns to Natasha, who is contemplating the screen impassively. 

“I’m sure they have a good reason.” she murmurs, meeting his gaze steadily.

“I’m getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor.” he raises his eyebrows at Natasha with a faint smile.

“Relax,” she purrs. “It’s not that complicated.”

He holds his gaze with Natasha for one more moment before turning to Rumlow.

“How many pirates?”

“Twenty-five. Top mercs, led by this guy,” he pulls up a profile of a strict looking man of the screen. “George Batroc, XD-GSE, Action division. He’s at the top of Interpol’s red notice. Before the French de-mobilized him he had 36 kill missions. This guy’s got a rep for maximum casualties.”

“Hostages?” Steve asks, in referral to the details of those held captive.

“Uhhh, mostly tex. One officer. Jasper Sitwell.” Steve and Natasha both exchange shocked glances. “They’re in the gallery.”

“What’s Sitwell doing on a launch ship?" Steve wonders aloud. Alright, I’m gonna sweep the deck and find Batroc. Nat, you kill the engines and wait for instructions. Rumlow, you sweep aft, find the hostages, get em to life pods, get em out. Let’s go.” 

“Strike, you heard the Captain. Gear up.” Rumlow instructs his team as the Quinjet hums in anticipation for the descent below clouds.

The group disintegrates as they spread around the ship, preparing for the mission. Steve looks around to see where Nat has disappeared off to and sees her loading several pistols in a corner. He heads over, on the pretence of checking that they’re intercoms are functional.

“Secure Channel 7.” he mumbles into his com.

Natasha hears it in her ear and calls back, “Seven secure.” as he walks over. “You doing anything fun Saturday night?” she asks, and Steve’s heart stops for a second. He retains his composure and smiles mischeviously back at her.

“What, you mean apart from taking you out?”

Natasha, shocked, almost drops the thing she’s holding, but manages to cover it up. “’S funny, Rogers. Seriously, you’re a comedian.” 

He chuckles happily, but continues. “Well, all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so…no, not really.” 

Natasha grins back at him and the pilot speaks over the intercom of the ship. “Coming up on the drop zone, Cap.” 

“You know, if you asked Kristin out from statistics, she’d probably say yes.” Natasha continued. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, though maybe she subconsciously hoped that if Steve got involved with someone else, she would be able to ignore the feelings that had been steadily growing inside her for the past two years and push them down, far enough to become blissfully ignorant of them. Maybe she just wanted to see if he’d take the chance. 

Steve walks backwards to the edge of the ship’s ramp, clipping his helmet on below his chin. “That’s why I don’t ask.” he shouts over the wind that whistles outside. 

“Too shy or too scared?” she yells back.

“Too busy!” he smiles before winking at her and diving head first out of the ship and into the thick, misty air over the Indian Ocean. As he falls, he revises his previous sentence. _Too busy falling for someone else…_

As Steve nears the surface of the icy sea, he straightens out in a streamline to gain speed, before flipping at the last second and hitting the surface feet first, being submerged instantly. The water hits his body and he instantly begins shaking. The pure iciness of the water causes his muscles to contract tightly, and he freezes for half a second before determinedly battling to the surface. When his face breaks the top of the water, wind assaults his ears and his face, but he ignores it, and begins a fast stroke towards the colossal ship. Huge chains anchor it in place, and he uses one to shimmy up to the deck of the ship, shaking the water seeping through his clothes off as much as possible. Once he hits the wood though, it’s _stealth mode activated_ , and he settles into his familiar spy stance that Nat had taught him two months into their partnership.

The guard in front of him isn’t even given a second to scream before Steve takes him down in utter and complete silence. When he reaches the other side of the deck, he can’t help but make some noise, as his shield hits one, no, two, guards, knocking them down like freaking bowling pins. Steve continues to make his way around the deck, sprinting as fast as he can and accidentally reminding himself of the run he was on just this morning. 

The next group of pirates he sees are met with his boot, first in the chest which sends them flying over side, then the leg, sending them falling to the floor, then to the face which knocks them out. He takes a punch to the last one who decided to get up again and then turns and runs away, fast. Now having reached the longest side of the ship, he speeds up, knocking a rogue guard over the edge of the ship and into the sea as he passes. He is forced to stop when he is greeted with yet two more guards. He rolls into the first one’s legs and proceeds to punch his face. He aims a high kick at the second one, who is sent into a wall behind him, before he turns to battle the first one who had returned with a knife. Steve blocks the jabs at his midsection, flinging the man up and over his shoulder, connecting with the ground with a trembling _slam_. The second one reaches up to pull a fire alarm above his head, but using the knife he had disarmed the first guard with, Steve pierces the hand of the guard, who cries in alarm and cradles his arm to his chest, Steve’s knife sticking straight out of it. Steve knocks him out with one last kick to the head and dashes past him. 

Now on the main body of the ship, no longer around the edge, he launches himself over a painted white railing and lands in the midst of a rather alarmingly large group of pirates. Steve takes down the first couple no problem, a number of blows to the head, stomach, and the next two he alternates hits on either side with his shield until they finally collapse, but he sees more coming. He twists in the air and slings his shield in the direction of an oncoming pirate. It bounces against three different walls before hitting him in the face and he goes crumbling to the ground. Steve struggles with another long haired man before breaking his collarbone, one, and another bone in the arm, two, and throwing him down. He catches his returned shield and turns to face yet another guard who he takes down, and another one who he smashes the face of in with his shield. 

A gun cocks behind him and a foreign voice exclaims. He knows the gun is aimed at him and doesn’t move. The man shouts again, but before Steve can retaliate, the _putt_ of a dart hitting his body causes him to fall to the ground. Steve turns to see Rumlow landing with his parachute on the deck.

“Thanks.” 

“Yeah, seemed pretty helpful for that one.” Rumlow smiles faintly back Steve. Behind him, Steve can see Natasha on her way down and he slings his shield back onto his back as she lands beside him. 

“What about the nurse that lives across the hall from you? She seems kinda nice.” Natasha continues, acting as though nothing had happened since their last encounter. Steve rolls his eyes but can’t help smiling.

“Secure the engine room. Then find me a date.” he instructs her, and she crosses behind him to another white railing, pitching herself over it and onto the deck below.  
“Not that I need one!” he yells after her, but he doesn’t know if she heard.  
She did.  
Before she disappears into the blackness, she calls back, “I’m multitasking!”. And she knows Steve laughed. As she breaks into a run, she allows herself a small, private smile, which she has reserved only for Steve.  
Not that he knows it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mercs - mercenaries  
> Aft- towards the stern of a ship.
> 
> I had to quite a bit of reorganising for this chapter because when I watched the movie there were helllaaaa inaccuracies that I had to fix. It is 6:39am when Natasha texts Steve that they have a mission, and yet when they arrive on the Lumerian Star, it is pitch black! I’ll admit there could have been a staggered time difference between Washington DC and the Indian Ocean, but it was only 5 hours, so even if they arrive on the Lumerian Star at like 8am US time, it should be daylight on the Indian Ocean, but it ain’t. I understand why they did it, for atmospheric purposes etc and a sneaky attack, but as a writer you can’t afford to be loose like that, so I had to make it that Nat and Steve drove down to the Scotland Lookout Point on the Maryland coast, which took 2-ish hours. That took them to 8am. Then they boarded the jet and flew to the Indian Ocean which took them another good few hours. They would arrive at somewhat 2-3pm in US time, 7-8pm IO time, which is just affordable enough for dim lighting and for the sun to have set. But THEN I needed to take into account human nature. Steve wouldn’t have had time to eat before or after his run, so that would need to happen, not to mention toilet breaks and outfit changes for the both of them. What’s more, Rumlow stated that the hostages were taken 93 minutes prior to their arrival on the Star, which would’ve meant Nat and Steve were on their way to a mission they didn’t even know existed, so I had to make it so the attack came first, to which they set off to stop, and _then_ they took hostages, and _that_ is when they intercept. It was quite a handful to figure out, I’ll tell you that. Don’t ever tell me writers never have to work their asses off!  
> As a result, there may still be some things that don’t add up, but I have done my best, so please just ignore it :)


	13. It's So Different From The World I'm Living In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiii! Sorry this too so long to get up, but a LOT of stuff has been going on in my personal life, plus my computer crashed so I had to start my work all over again.  
> However, this chapter is quite long, and has quite a bit of Romanogers content, so hopefully that makes up for it being like three days since my last post...  
> Enjoy!

Song: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme - ABBA

Location(s): INDIAN OCEAN, 33.1376° S, 81.8262° E, THE TRISKELION, WASHINGTON DC, 38.8967° N, 77.0630° W  
Date(s): 09/24/2014, 09/25/2014

(ctd)

While Steve works on ambushing Batroc, Natasha makes her way silently and speedily towards the engine room. Unknown to Steve, she has her own mission, but will first complete the one Steve has tasked her with. She’s not _completely_ disobedient. 

On light feet, she almost dances down the silent passages. She’s in a good mood. Her banter with Steve about who he should date her makes this slightly less pleasant task bearable, and it is what spurs her on her quick feet through these underground corridors as she approaches the engine room.

The first man she sees in her way is against a wall, speaking into a phone, and her hand curls around a pole next to her as she turns. Putting on her most seductive voice, she purrs,

“Hey sailor.” 

The man has no time to react, as Natasha throws her leg with shattering force into his side and he crumples with a groan. Before he can launch a counter attack, Black Widow unleashes a grapple hook from her belt and swings it around the man’s neck once, twice, until it holds him in a chokehold with a fierce grip. She uses this length to pull him around and slam him against a wall before fashioning a harness out of the hold the grapple hook has around the man and back flipping over the edge of the railed platform, down and into the channels below. At some point, she has drawn her gun, and as she falls steadily down on the rope hanging from the man’s neck, she shoots several men placed on separate floors in what has to be one of the most badass moves Natasha has done in her life. 

When she touches down on another platform floor, her body is conveniently hidden behind the fallen one of a pirate, and so when the two men on the platform below first look up, they can see nothing. Then Natasha’s hands, both holding guns, stick out of either side, and fire blind towards them. She still manages to hit them both though, and they collapse instantly. 

Elsewhere on the ship, the Strike team have managed to infiltrate the main couple rooms where the hostages are held and guarded, while other snipers man the outside of the ship, ready to fire. Everyone is in position. Everyone but Natasha. 

_She_ is still making her way through the artificial yellow light of the corridors, nearing the engine room, but not quite there yet. Just as she lands on another platform with the stance of, well, a spider, her intercom crackles to life.

“Natasha, what’s your status?” Steve hisses. She doesn’t answer, still trying to maintain what little cover she has left before she is forced to answer Steve. She breaks into a sprint towards the man just as Steve repeats himself. “Status, Natasha?” 

“Hang on!” she yells back, and the man turns at the sound, but not before Natasha has her legs already wrapped around his neck as she plunges two Widow Bites into either side. He seizes up and falls to the floor. Diving into a forwards roll off him, Natasha jumps to her feet as the man’s body hits the ground with a thump. Another pirate comes careering around the corner and she blocks his double blow, grabbing his arm and twisting it until it cracks and the man yells. Cleverly, she accompanies it with a blow to the side, then drops into a spider stance and sweeps out his legs with a swing of her own. The man falls on his back with a groan, but Natasha doesn’t stop there. Without so much as a glance back to check the location, she kicks the gun out of a different man’s arms who had appeared behind her, but when he grabs a hold of her, she elbows him first in the face, then again, before yanking him over her shoulder with a huge leap into the air for momentum. The man goes flying over her shoulder and lands with a bang, as does Natasha, but she leaps up to her feet immediately.

She holds up her mic to her face and confirms “Engine room secure.” into it, before picking up a lead pipe and turning to swing it into the head of a pirate who had so foolishly resisted defeat. Letting it fall from her hand to the floor with a _clang_ , she walks away from the scene of utter destruction, a smirk tilting her mouth upwards slightly. _Black Widow, baby._

She hears over her intercom as Steve calls for order and then gives the go ahead. Natasha, however, is on a different mission. Having previously memorized the map of the ship, she swiftly and silently makes her way to the head, where she knows the room with the computers are. When she arrives, the lights are on, conveniently granting her an easy line of sight towards a computer she can use. She pulls the flash drive Fury had gifted her and plugs it into the side of it as it hums to life.  
Just as she has boosted up the machine, Steve’s panicked voice fills her ear. “Natasha? Batroc’s on the move. Circle back to Rumlow and protect the hostages. _Natasha?_ ” She hears the clang of Cap’s shield before the intercom goes dead. A spark of concern blooms in her chest, but she knows there’s nothing she can do about it at the moment. She has a mission. 

Turning back to the blinking screen, she gets to work quickly, pulling up the codes and gateways she can use to hack her way to the centre. Just as she pulls up the final sequence transfer bar, she hears grunts and thuds that means Steve must be mid-battle with Batroc. Guess he found him then. Part of her begs to go and help him, assist him in this fierce adversary, but her duty freezes her to the spot.

The progress bar inches closer to the end. _Twenty percent, twenty-one…_

Briefly, she hears Steve’s voice in French in response to a remark by Batroc. “ _On va voir.” We’ll see._ A part deep inside her finds it mildly arousing but, horrified, she throws that thought as far away from her as she can, her eyes widening in the betrayal of her own mind. The pace of the blows and shouts increase, blending into an irregular beat, not unlike the beatboxing Natasha had heard and unfortunately witnessed walking down the night-time streets of DC with Steve all those months ago. They had been forced to stifle their laughter until they were out of earshot of the beatboxers, and where they had spluttered and snorted together, crying with laughter and almost collapsing on the concrete alleyway floor at how _bad_ the beatboxing had actually been. Natasha’s heart floods with warmth and she allows herself a smile, before tugging her attention back to the task at hand. 

The progress bar hurtles a small distance, before returning to steadily rising, nearing the seventy percent mark. _Come on._

Suddenly, the door through which she had entered is smashed inwards, falling like a board straight to the ground, the two men Natasha had been listening to fight collapsed on top of it. It hits the ground with a muffled crack and thud at the same time, skidding a metre or so before stopping. Steve doesn’t hesitate to knock Batroc out with one last hit, before he leans back, panting.

“Well, this is awkward.” she says to announce her presence.

Steve turns to see her, shock and bewilderment crossing his handsome features as he takes in her position over the computer and the flickering screens up in front of her. She smiles at him seductively.

“What are you doing?” he demands, getting up off Batroc’s body and storming towards her. 

“Backing up the hard drive, it’s a good habit to get into.” she jokes as Steve reaches her, glancing behind him once to check Batroc has remained unconscious.  
“Rumlow needed your help. What the hell are you doing here?” _Oh, so he’s_ mad _mad_. 

The bar crosses the seventy-five percent mark, gathering speed as it rounds up the last few dozen zip files from the web. Steve takes it all in, his breath steadying.

“You’re saving S.H.I.E.L.D intel.”

“Whatever I can my hands on.” 

“Our mission is to rescue hostages.” Steve instructs. 

“No,” she corrects him. “That’s _your_ mission.” Now the intel has been successfully downloaded, Nat whips the drive out of the jack and turns to face Steve, who is a lot closer than she had realised. She looks up at him, her head barely reaching his chin. 

“And you’ve done it _beautifully_.” She smirks at him, going to move past him, but Steve’s arm catches her, holding her against him.

“You just jeopardized this whole operation.” he barks at her, their faces almost touching as his fingers tighten around her arm. 

Natasha cocks her head. “I think that’s overstating things.” She can’t move while Steve still has her in his grip. It is vicelike around her, so she settles with continuing to stare up at him. 

Just then, movement in the corner where Batroc had previously been unconscious draws both sets of eyes over. Batroc is awake, and is flinging what is clearly an explosive at them as he sprints out of the room. Natasha has only to glance at Steve before they both jump into action. 

Steve knocks the explosive away from them with his shield before reaching behind him for Natasha. She jumps under his arm and it wraps securely away from her. Steve leaps from surface to surface of the desks towards a shut off room far, far away from the explosive. Natasha shoots the windows in as they smash through them, and the bomb explodes.

Hot flames lick at the partners’ backs as their bodies go cascading through the glass and crash into the room, debris following them and pricking at Natasha’s exposed skin. Both agents drag themselves to the wall housing the window they had just crashed through in case any more severe rubble was to head their way, panting and groaning in Natasha’s case. The broken glass scrapes underneath her as she collapses against the all, looking over at Steve who seems to be in better shape, thankfully. Natasha grimaces up at the ceiling as the full force of the landing hits her body, knowing that there will be some serious bruises by tomorrow.  
Steve checks over the rim of the wall into the destroyed computer room, which appears to be clear, because he slumps back down against the wall, gasping with a face covered in dirt and dust. 

“Okay. That one’s on me.” Natasha allows, looking back over at Steve.

“You’re damn right.” he growls, before getting to his feet and exiting the wreckage of the room. Natasha follows him out with her eyes, and when he leaves, rolls her eyes exasperatedly at herself. _This is exactly why I didn’t want to keep this mission a secret from Steve. Now he hates me. Great._

* * *

The trip back is uneventful, but Steve still doesn’t say one word to Natasha the entire time. When they arrive back at the Triskelion in DC, the sun has risen and the new day dawned, but neither of them are exactly high on sleep. Still, there’s no rest for the wicked. When the two disembark the ship, they head in different directions.  
Steve marches towards Fury’s office, fuming. His aching muscles beg for release, for rest, for a few hours of sleep, but this is a matter he must attend to. He will have to wait for sleep. Natasha’s probably sleeping right now. Good for her. He doesn’t care. She lied to him. She has no place in his thoughts in this moment.

When he reaches Fury’s office, he is facing away out onto the cityscape of Washington DC, but still does not hesitate in his answer when Steve accuses him,

“You just can’t stop yourself from lying can you?”

“I didn’t lie. Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours.” He saw this coming. He knew Steve would find out. 

“Which you didn’t feel obliged to share.”

“I’m not obliged to do anything.” Fury justifies himself.

“Those hostages could have died, Nick.” Fury whirls to face Steve in protest.

“I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure that didn’t happen." Nick's voice rises. 

“Soldiers trust each other. That’s what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns.”

“Are you under the illusion that for some reason Romanoff doesn’t trust you? Because if so, you would be sorely mistaken, _soldier_. Not everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D is a soldier, and not everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D can be trusted. The last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye!”

Steve stares him down, not answering. _She trusted him._

Nick continues. “I didn’t want you doing anything you weren’t comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything.”

“Look,” Steve says, pointing a finger on the table. “I can’t lead a mission when the people I’m leading have missions of their own.”

“It’s called compartmentalization. Nobody spills the secrets because nobody knows them all.”

“Except you.” Steve smiles drily, gesturing to Fury. Nick doesn’t say anything, stepping back from the desk he had been leaning over to talk to Rogers. He looks up after a moment.

“You’re wrong about me. I _do_ share. I’m nice like that.”

Fury beckons Steve wordlessly to one of the clear glass elevators, where he authorises clearance for Steve, and they descend towards something that the AI had called ‘Project Insight’. 

The sight that greets Steve when the elevator opens out onto a monumental underground hangar leaves him utterly speechless. It’s like two years ago, on the helicarrier, witnessing this astronomical, constantly advancing technology function before his very eyes. The hangar holds what seems to be three… ships? There really is no other word for it. Except these ships, not unlike helicarriers in design, are far bigger than anything Steve has ever seen in his entire, long life. They are so heavily weaponized that you can barely see the underbelly of metal for the guns that cover every inch of every surface. Incredibly powerful crabs loft smaller quintjet-looking aircrafts _onto_ the actual ships. Ships holding mini ships. Canons three times the size of the Hulk in his full transformation sit broadly on each of the ships, and men swarm around the hangar like bees in a beehive. Which, bizarrely, is what this view before him hits Steve as. Just a bunch of bees fighting to get the best honey. 

“This is Project Insight.” Nick tells him. “Three next generation helicarriers, synced to a network of targeting satellites.”

Steve and Nick patrol down the centre strip between the beehive of action, Steve taking in everything around him. 

“Launched from Lemerian Star.” Steve calls Fury out.

“Once we get them in the air, they never need to come down. Continuous sub-orbital flight courtesy of our new repulsor engines.” Fury gestures to one as they approach it, beastly in its size and bulk.

“Stark?” Steve asks, referring to whether Tony had created them or not. 

“Ehh, he had a few suggestions once he got an up close looks at our old turbines. These new long-range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute.”  
The longer Fury goes on, the sicker Steve feels. All he can think about is the lives that these machines have the capabilities of taking. Mass genocide, on a scale like the world has never seen. Extinction, with one push of a button. 

“The satellites can read a terrorists DNA before he steps outside his spider hole. We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.” He finishes.

“I thought the punishment usually came after the crime.” Steve says dryly, irritation and injustice flaming up inside him at Fury’s nonchalance and pride at this monstrosity. 

“We can’t afford to wait that long.” Nick defends.

“Who’s we?” 

“After New York, I convinced the security council we needed quantum surge in threat analysis. For once, we’re way ahead of the curve.”

“By holding a gun to everyone in earth and calling it protection.” Steve snaps, justified. This is wrong. Just _wrong,_ all of it. 

“You know, I read those SSR files. Greatest generation? You guys did some nasty stuff.”

“Yeah,” Steve squares up to Fury who had turned to face him. “We compromised. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well, but we did it so that people could be free.” He gestures around to the machines, the guns, the weapons, the horror.

“This isn’t freedom, this is fear.” 

Nick steps threateningly towards Rogers, who stands his ground. “S.H.I.E.L.D takes the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be. It’s getting damn near past time for you to get with that program, Cap.”

Steve mutters his last sentence to Fury fiercely, “Don’t hold your breath.”, before turning and walking away from the director, not once looking back.

He’s been out of the ice for seventy years, and yet things are still, somehow, the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da!  
> 1\. Did y’all fr think I was about to try and iterate that fight scene between Batroc and Steve? ahA! Fools… Seriously though, that was some mean choreography I was not about to try and put not words, and besides, it was so much easier to stick with Natasha’s POV in that part. So I did :)
> 
> 2\. Some of y’all may think that Steve was being a stroppy baby about Natasha 'betraying' him but you forget just how close these two are… like, they tell each other _everything_. Stevie was just offended Natasha didn’t think she could trust him, periyat.


	14. The Heart Wants What It Wants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 14!  
> I know these chapters don’t actually cover a lot of the story, barely any of it at all actually, but it feels like the write length to write for me personally. The shorter it is, the more often I can upload.

The Heart Wants What It Wants - Selena Gomez

Location(s): THE TRISKELION, WASHINGTON DC, 38.8967° N, 77.0630° W, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, 38.8860° N, 77.0214° W, CENTRAL DC, 38.8951° N, 77.0364° W  
Date: 09/25/2014

Steve sits in the room reserved for him in the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, the Triskelion, feeling utterly hopeless. Still in his suit, his shield lies on a table a few feet from him, his shoes scattered on the floor. He sits on the bed, staring at the same spot on the wall, his throat tight as he thinks. Overwhelmed by all the things he is feeling at that moment, his heart thuds rapidly in his chest.

_This isn’t freedom, this is fear._

_That one’s on me.  
You’re damn right._

_Are you under the illusion that for some reason Romanoff doesn’t trust you? Because if so, you would be sorely mistaken, soldier._

_We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen._

_You’ve done it beautifully._

_Steve, we’re gonna be okay._

Steve’s knees curl up to his chest as his body curls in on itself, trembling. The quiet sobs finally free themselves from his throat, the tears falling from his ice blue eyes. 

He hates _all_ of this. He hates the uncertainty, he hates that fact that he doesn’t know how to feel, he hates the fact that he woke up from a war torn country thinking it was different, when really it is all the same. People will die because of Project Insight, whether they deserve to or not. And now he has lost Natasha, and he hates that he hates that. He hates that his heart aches, independent without its partner. Because Steve hates to admit it, but he is far more dependent on Natasha than she knows. When he thinks of her, this heavy, hot feeling pools in his chest, balling into a round sphere and pumping in time with his heart. And Steve won’t admit it, he refuses to accept, that it could be… love. Because love has no place in the heart of a soldier like him, and even less of a place to be feeling it for the redheaded assassin, the Russian spy. Nothing could ever be in the cards for them. They couldn’t afford it and Steve hates that he feels this… this _feeling_ with everything in his body. He hates that he feels it because he feels like he has betrayed her. Peggy. He is repulsed by every part of him that somehow loves Natasha, because it has betrayed his past self, who believed that Peggy was the only woman for him.

So his cries. He cries for what he lost in the ice, what horrors he has found after resurfacing, and what inexplicable love he has found in resurfacing as well, in a person he never expected to feel it for.

The tears choke Steve, leaving him gasping for air. He arms, wrapped around his knees, lie damp with the tears that fell onto the material. His body begs for release, begs to be held, to fall into another’s arms. This person would usually be Natasha, and the overwhelming loneliness that this fact leaves him with makes his shoulders wrack with a new set of sobs. 

What seems like hours passes, and Steve’s cries slowly settle into smaller, occasional gasps. When the crying has stopped, he finally looks up and wipes the remaining streaks of tears from his face, finally accepting the truth. 

S.H.I.E.L.D is a dangerous place, his past is exactly that: the past, and… 

He loves Natasha.

* * *

However, before he leaves his past behind him forever, he has a few last trips to make. Getting himself together, he takes a long shower, changes into some more comfortable, inconspicuous clothes, eats some food, takes a quick nap, then goes to fetch the motorcycle he has travelled to DC on, ready to set out on a mission of his very own. 

The sun shines down on him as he whizzes down across the bridge leading away from the Triskelion. Having previously memorized the route he needed to take, he cruises down the streets with a strange sense of calm, peaceful after his breakdown in the room. His emotions are all washed out, leaving him with a strange sense of clarity and truth. 

When he arrives, the words of the front of the building flash back him tauntingly. _The Smithsonian Institute._ He can still hear her voice in his head, clear as day. _“Either one of you know where The Smithsonian is? I’m here to pick up a fossil.”_

When he enters the museum, his navy cap pulled low on his head, the strange blanket of tranquility that museums give off settles over not just Steve, but every being and object in the museum. Sure, there is low level chatter between visitors, but nothing above a low hum of noise that Steve finds easy to ignore. 

He makes his way to the exhibition he knows exists, the one dedicated to his very self. It’s slightly bewildering to see so many blown up versions of his face everywhere he looks, sometimes accompanied by the handsome face of Bucky, or his old commanding officer. Steve sticks close to the walls, creeping around the different demonstrations representing his life. It’s the olden day equivalent of Googling yourself, which Steve had learnt was a thing back in DC with Natasha all those months ago. It felt strange, to say the very least. 

“A symbol, to the nation. A hero, to the world. The story of Captain America is one of honour, bravery, and sacrifice. Denied enlistment due to poor health, Steven Rogers was chosen for a program unique in the annals of American warfare. One that would transform him into the world’s first super soldier.”

As Steve takes in his surroundings, his eyes fall on a small boy, his coral blue t-shirt stamped with the Captain America logo. His small mouth opens in surprise as he looks into the eyes of his hero. Steve lifts a finger to his lips and gestures for the boy to keep his secret, a smile creeping onto Steve’s face. The boy nods, dumbfounded, and Steve moves on. 

His next stop displays an old film of Steve leading a group of soldiers across what looks to be rough sea shores. “Battle test.” the narrator announces over the speakers. “Captain America and his Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission: taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science division.”

Steve descends into a large pit where people mill around the pyramid of mannequins that don the uniforms that they would have worn in their time in battle, along with various displays of soldier profiles and war strategies. One catches his eye, and he walks over to it, his heart sinking in that way that old, worn out grief makes it do. 

“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable in both schoolyard and battlefield.” the narrator explains as Steve looks up at Bucky’s young, striking face. “Barnes is the only howling commando to give his life in service of his country.” Steve watches the videos of him and Bucky working as a team in the field, laughing together at base camp. The lump that rises in his throat is impossible to get rid of. Bucky’s smile, wide and happy, is like a dagger in his heart. He misses his best friend. His brother. 

Continuing to explore this particularly large, strangely organized blast from the past, Steve finds himself in a mini cinema, where a small roll of film repeats itself. The person on it is like another slap in the face. It’s Peggy. 

She sits in what looks to be a very accommodating home. Yellow curtains, cream comfy chairs, warm colours. She sits in a bright blue posh suit, a notable contrast to the warm yellows behind her. She is older than when Steve last saw her, and a subtitle across the bottom informs him that this interview took place in New York, in 1953. 

“That was a difficult winter. A blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Steve, Captain Rogers, he fought his way through a HYDRA blockade that had pinned out allies down for months. He saved over a thousand men, including the man who would become my husband.” Steve looks down to the ancient compass he holds open in his hands, her young face looking back at him. Outdated, is the word that comes to mind. Peggy has moved on. Maybe he should too. “Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life.”

* * *

When he finds her, her hair is white, her skin is lined, and she is a mere shell of what Steve used to know her to be. He browses the photos across her dresser in his seat next to the bed, the ones of her, and her husband, and her kids, and even grandkids. Everything he wanted but never got. Is there still a chance for that kind of happy ending for him? If so, it got lost in the ice the same time Steve himself did.

“You should be proud of yourself, Peggy.” 

She hums in assent, following Steve’s gaze to the old photos lining her dresser.

“I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.” 

Steve stays silent, his mind’s eye full of the colour red, glinting in the sun as it morphs into waves of hair, waving over a shoulder. Eyes, shining so vividly, like emeralds. 

“Well… it depends what you mean…”

“What?” Peggy asks. “What is it?”

Steve’s eyes have fallen to his lap, fighting that feeling of shame, shame that he experiences these feelings for someone other than Peggy.

“What if… what if… I had a chance? To live… that life… a life like you’ve lived?” he trails off, not daring to reveal any more.

Comprehension dawns on Peggy’s face as it lights up with a smile.

“What’s her name?” she murmurs softly. Steve looks up in shock, bewildered at how she understood so quickly. 

“What?”

“Who is she?” Peggy reinforces, reaching a hand up to gently shove Steve, still smiling.

Steve doesn’t answer for a moment, disbelieving that he was really going to talk to Peggy about this, but… she’s moved on. Shouldn’t Steve get that chance as well, even if Peggy still remains alive? 

“Her name is Nat… But, Peggy, I don’t know if I should-"

Peggy shushes him before he can continue. “Listen to me Steve, and listen good. That man who went into the ice all those years ago, that Steve, the man that I loved, he is in the _past_. That past, that is our past. What you are living now, what you are feeling now, is your _present_. Steve, this is your life now, and this is my life now too. You deserve a chance at happiness, and if you feel like you know what direction to go in to get there, just _run._ Don’t worry about me, or your past, or any of it. You deserve to live the life that I have, and I don’t want our past or anything about me to stop you from achieving that.”

“But Peggy… I don’t think I could ever love anyone but you…”

“You already do, Steve.” Peggy says gently. “I can see it in your eyes, when you talk about her. It doesn’t matter whether we want to love someone or not, sometimes we just do. We love who we love, and it sucks. It doesn’t mean you ever have to forget about me, in fact I hope you don’t, but the heart wants what it wants, and to hold back from that would be to damn yourself to unhappiness forever. If you love this ‘Nat’, run with it. Go, go _live_. I know I sure as hell have.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, deeply moved by her words. He still loves Peggy, of course he does, but his Peggy is different to this wise old woman in front of him now. Maybe she is right. He can’t help loving her, but he needs to let go. Because he also loves Natasha.

The thought that had plagued him earlier comes back to bite. There is no place for love in war. Nothing can ever happen between him and Nat while S.H.I.E.L.D rages a war on threats that don’t even exist yet, flaunting their weapons of mass destruction like a toy that is only slightly bigger than the enemy’s.

This shows in Steve’s face apparently, because Peggy speaks up again. “There’s more. What is it?” 

“For as long as I can remember, I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I I’m not quite sure what that is anymore… And I thought I could… throw myself back in, and follow orders, serve…” He looks back up as Peggy as he finishes, an ironic smile tracing his features. “It’s just not the same.” 

Peggy chuckles lightly, a cough or two escaping her aged chest in the exertion. “You’re always so dramatic.” 

Steve smiles back and glances out of the window at the streets outside this care home she lives in. “Look, nothing is the same, Steve. You saved the _world_. We rather… mucked it up.”

“You didn’t.” Steve protests. “Knowing you helped found S.H.I.E.L.D is half the reason I stay.” _The other half is another matter entirely._

Peggy reaches out and grasps Steve’s hand in hers comfortingly. “Hey… The world has changed, none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to... start over.” Peggy descends into a fit of coughing, and as Steve gets up to get her water, he knows she means Nat. To start over with her. But he doesn’t know _how_.

When he turns back around, Peggy’s eyes are closed and he sits back down, gently jogging her and handing her the water. She rolls her head to face him, but when she sees his face, hers changes completely. Shock, disbelief, relief, ecstasy all cross over her face within a second. It’s like she is seeing him for the first time all over again. But this time she is.

“Steve?” she whispers, emotion thickening her voice. 

“Yeah?”

“W…w…you’re alive!” 

Steve’s heart falls. Her Alzheimer’s has struck again. She has forgotten everything they just talked about, including Natasha. She has even forgotten that he came out of the ice after seventy years. He can’t talk to her about Nat, or any of it again. It’s easier just to let her believe… whatever she wants to believe. He smiles politely as she mumbles,

“Y…you came… you came back!” 

He nods, “Yeah, Peg.”

Tears fill Peggy’s eyes and she sobs, “It’s been so long.”

Steve’s façade falls and his eyes fall forlornly to the floor.

“S, so long…” she continues. He looks back up, planting a smile determinedly on his face.

“Well I couldn’t leave my best girl…not when she owes me a dance.” Steve acts delightedly, when really his heart mourns desperately for the loss of the Peggy he knew. 

When he leaves, the feelings of despair that he had felt this morning return, opening his heart and letting the pain pour out. At least… he has closure now.  
Peggy told him what to do, and even if she is sometimes no longer that same Peggy, what she said will stick with him forever. Her words echo around his head. 

_We love who we love, it sucks._

_To hold back from that would be to damn yourself to unhappiness forever._

_If you love this ‘Nat’, run with it._

Suddenly, what he has to do doesn’t seem too complicated at all. On the contrary, it’s quite simple. 

Over on the other side of the city, Natasha wakes with a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. For anyone who wants to know, the last flashback of a voice saying, “Steve, we’re gonna be okay.” is a flashback from the time him and Nat spent together in DC, when Steve got agitated about his conscience on a mission and Nat had to calm him down.  
> 2\. That scene at the very beginning was pretty much just me taking out my emotions on the character so sorry Stevie, I still love u I promise.  
> 3.The conversation between Steve and Peggy !! I loved writing it so much, I felt like I could finally give them the ending they deserved, and one which meant Steve could move on with Natasha! Ugh, Peggy really is very wise in this chapter. And also the quote “We love who we love, it sucks.” actually comes from a movie Chris Evans wrote, directed and starred in called Before We Go. Love that movie, y’all should go check it out.


	15. How's It Feel To Be On The Other Side?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all would not believe the ordeal I went through choosing a song for this chapter. I guess Selena Gomez strikes again. Steve is feeling v bitter in this chapter because Nat lied to him about her mission so he’s being a stroppy bitch and asking Sharon out to try and get back at Nat even though he thinks she doesn’t feel the same way about him as he does for her. Aha! He’s wrong, bitches.  
> Also warning for some strong language in this chapter. Steve is under a lot of pressure and so he can be let off for the swearing in my opinion.

People You Know – Selena Gomez 

Location: USDVA, 38.9068° N, 77.0037° W, CENTRAL WASHINGTON, 38.9081° N, 77.0349° W

Date: 09/25/2014

Steve had originally intended to simply meander around the streets of Washington DC, thinking and overthinking about S.H.I.E.L.D, Project Insight and also Natasha , but his feet instead take him to the non-descript building he had remembered the address of, which a sign outside labels as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Steve vaguely recalls Sam telling him to drop in when he wanted, and suddenly he is inside, mooching down the halls towards a voice he can hear in an open room down the end. As he draws nearer, he begins be able to make it out.

“I think it’s getting worse… A cop pulled me over last week. He thought I was drunk.” Steve rounds the corner to see a large room of people, sitting in neat rows of chairs. Veterans. They all wear, strangely, the same kind of colour scheme of clothes, and Steve wonders if this is habit they gained from their time in the army. Lots of chequed shirts, plain dark browns or greys, beiges, some lighter colours, but consequently tinted dark as a result of their surroundings. Sam stands leaning against a pedestal at the head of the group, and everyone sits in polite silence, all listening to the speaking woman. “I swerved… to miss a plastic bag. I thought it was an IED.” 

Everybody’s gaze falls to the ground in pity, respect and understanding. Shared experiences. 

“Some stuff you leave there. Other stuff you bring back.” Sam speaks up from the front. “It’s our job to figure out how to carry it. Is it gonna be in a big suitcase, or in a little man purse? It’s up to you.” He looks out onto the group of veterans, who nod lightly back to him in agreement. 

When the session ends, Steve hovers in the hall, waiting for Sam to finish sending people off and saying his goodbyes, before he approaches. Sam sees him as he tidies up some papers on a small side table, grinning. “Look who it is. The running man.” 

“Caught the last few minutes. ‘S pretty intense.” he comments on the group session he had just witnessed. 

“Yeah, brother.” Sam says, “We all got the same problems... Guilt, regret.” Sam’s cheery faced falls for a second, and Steve sees the broken glass shards of an ancient grief in his eyes.

“You lose someone?” Steve asks softly.

“My wingman, Riley.” He confesses. Steve stays quiet, waiting for him to go on. “Flying a night mission, standard rescue PJ op, nothing we hadn’t done a thousand times before. Till RPG knocked Riley’s dumb ass out of the sky.” 

Sam’s eyes cloud over in the memory and Steve’s heart reaches out for him. Bucky’s scream as he falls from the train echoes around his head, tears pricking at his own eyes. He knows how it feels. 

“Nothing I could do. It was like I was up there just to watch.”  
Yes, it was. That is so accurate. It was like that for him too. Suddenly it surprises him just how much him and Sam have in common. 

“I’m sorry.” he says sympathetically, looking up at Sam. 

“After that, I had a really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?” Steve moves his head in agreement, a vague nod, and gestures to his sheets and the halls around them.

“Are you happy now, back in the world?”

Sam turns in a circle, mock searching for people. “Hey, the number of people giving me orders is down to about… zero? So hell yeah.” he grins. “You thinking about getting out?”

Steve shakes his head quickly. “No…” but then cocks his head to the side in reconsideration. “...I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know what I would do with myself if I did.” 

“Ultimate fighting?” Sam suggests, and Steve chuckles. “Just a great idea, off the top of my head. Seriously, you could do whatever you want to do." he reassures. "What makes you happy?” 

The question throws Steve off, he doesn’t know how to answer it. Natasha used to make him happy, he knows that much, before she turned her back on him. Before that, well, it wasn’t about happiness, it was about winning the war. A lot has changed.  
Now, without Natasha, he doesn’t have anything to make him happy.

He settles with the safe answer of, “I don’t know.” because he doesn’t, and he wishes he did. The faint smile on his face hides the crumbling interior, because he has never gone this long without talking to Natasha. He doesn’t want to give in though. He is certain on that. She betrayed him and suddenly she has gone from someone he knew to someone he doesn’t. In the blink of an eye. Just like that. It shouldn’t be like that, and he is not ready to forgive her just yet.

* * *

Night has fallen as he makes his way back to his apartment on his motorbike, and the darker the sky gets, the more angry at Natasha Steve gets. 

Did she think he would just forgive her? Does she really believe that the job, this job they both have, is more important than the last two years they spent together? Why doesn’t she think she can trust him? It wouldn’t have hurt the mission at all to tell him, he just would have needed to know here she was, and that _she was safe._ That’s all he would have wanted, is that too much of an ask? It wouldn’t have hurt the mission to tell him at all, and he wouldn’t have told anyone else, because he trusts Natasha. But apparently she doesn’t trust him. He knows it’s not in her nature to trust, or tell people things at all, but he thought he was different. She had told him so, in their time in DC. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have told him everything. Everything about her. The Red Room, the gory details about the program, the graduation ceremony, the nightmares they left her with afterwards. She had poured her heart and soul out to Steve, and all of a sudden that wasn’t enough? _Bullshit._  
Fine, he thinks, if he means that little to her, he’ll show her just how little she means to him.  
He runs all the way up the half dozen storeys of stairs to his apartment, where he sees the nurse outside her door who lives across the hall. The one Natasha had tried to set him up on a date with. As he greets her and walks past her, inspiration strikes. _Alright Natasha. You wanted me to date, I’ll do just that._

She hangs up the phone that had been between her shoulder and head due to the heavy hamper of laundry in her hands and drops it into the basket with the clothes. at Steve's questioning glance, she shrugs her shoulders.

“My aunt. She’s kind of an insomniac.” she chuckles nervously. There is a little bit of an awkward silence. Steve looks at the basket of clothes in her arms.

“Hey, if you want… if you _want_ , you’re welcome to use my machine.” He gestures to the laundry in her hands. "Might be cheaper than the one in the basement.” He smiles politely.

“Oh yeah? What’s it cost?” she replies.

“Cup of coffee?” he suggests, waiting anxiously for her answer. 

“Thank you, but I, um… already have a load in downstairs, and you really don’t want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward, so…”

“Ah, well.” Steve laughs softly. “I’ll keep my distance." He holds up his hands defensively. 

“Hopefully not too far.” she hints, gazing at him. He nods back slightly in acknowledgment, turning to unlock the door of his apartment, his heart stinging of betrayal. Just as he is about to open the door, she calls back.

“Oh, and I think you left your stereo on.” She points to the door, from which only now Steve can hear muffled old jazz music from inside.

“Oh, yeah, thank you.” he bluffs, when really his heart is racing. Not with betrayal this time, but with danger. He watches the nurse disappear down the stairs before turning, eyebrows furrowed, the face the door. Well he’s certainly not going in _that_ way. He holds his ear closer to the wood panels and is shocked when he recognises the music. Someone is messing with him, and not in a joking way.

* * *

So, naturally, as all people would, Steve sneaks round to the balcony on the front side of the apartment, where he can get it through the window. 

The music blasts through at him as he pulls the sliding window up, climbing through with alarming agility for a man of his size and build. As he sneaks through his apartment, he picks up his shield that he has previously discarded against the wall, slipping it over his arm, defensive mode fully activated. The music grows steadily louder as he approaches the living room and the end of the hallway. When he pokes his head round the side of the wall, he sees the source of the music. A record player in the corner of the room, turning steadily, next to which sits a rather beat-up Nick Fury.  
His head, resting on the back of the chair he sits in, turns to face Steve, who relaxes against the wall in relief. No hostiles today. Well, none yet. 

“I don’t remember giving you a key.” he says in irritation, looking at the floor. Fury sits up with a moan of pain. 

“You really think I’d need one? My wife…kicked me out.” 

Confusion lances Steve’s face. This isn’t like Fury. “Didn’t know you were married.”

Fury jerks his head to the side. “Well, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.” 

Steve rounds the corner towards Fury and reaches to turn a light on. Fury holds a hand up in peace and turns the light back off. He types something on the device he holds clutched in his hand and shows it to Steve. 

_EARS EVERYWHERE._

Steve looks incredulously at Nick. _Really? His apartment is bugged? For how long?_

“I’m sorry to have to do this, but I had no place else to crash.” Nick upkeeps the pretence, but also types out a new message and shows it to him again.

_SHIELD COMPROMISED._

Steve looks in disappointment and weariness at Nick. “Who else knows about your wife?” he asks, referencing to the breach of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick gets to his feet with a grunt, another message on his device. 

_YOU AND ME._

In upkeep of the cover, he translates, “Just… my friends.”

Steve’s mistrust of Nick is growing by the second. Nick has approached Steve now and they stand just a couple metres apart.

“Is that what we are?”

“That’s up to you.” Nick says.

Within a second, several things happen at once. One loud gunshot assaults Steve’s ears and he sees Nick’s back arch in agony as the bullet hits him straight through his spine. The first is quickly followed by a second, and all Steve can do is watch as Nick goes falling to the ground. Dust clouds from broken plaster surrounding them fills the air as Steve rushes to catch Nick, but he is too late and another shot goes off, hitting Nick as he rolls around on the ground, screaming in agony. Steve grabs a hold of him and heaves him away from the open living room, behind the wall of the hallway he had crept down earlier. As he goes, he sees the bullet holes that pierce the wall behind where Fury had stood, and follows the trail of aiming to a window on the east side. Out of it, he sees the glint of silver in the dark. Its shape morphs into an arm. _A metal arm._

Fury’s face is shiny with a sheen of sweat, the cuts and bruises on his face nothing compared to the catastrophic damage suffered below. Steve makes to go and locate the shooter, but Nick grabs his arm, forcing him to stay. He waits for him to say something, but Nick merely coughs and loosens his grip of Steve’s arm, showing him the very same flash drive that Natasha had obtained on the Lumerian Star, lying in his palm. The drive full of S.H.I.E.L.D intel. Now he knows why Fury sent her to get it. He has been suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D for a while. 

Steve takes the drive out of Nick’s hand, looking in disbelief and bewilderment back at the director, who coughs in exertion and pain. 

“Don’t…trust… _anyone_.” he pants determinedly. Fear, reluctance, confusion, all cross Steve’s face, before there is a loud banging on the door. Steve whips around, taking a defensive position against the wall of the bookcase behind him. He hears the nurse from next door calling his name and turns in shock to see her.

“Captain Rogers?” The woman is holding an extremely advanced looking gun, professionally creeping through the door she has just broke through.  
_Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. What the_ fuck? 

When she sees him, and talks fast. “Captain, I’m Agent 13, S.H.I.E.L.D special service.”

Steve is mistrusting of her, and rightfully so, as most of the people in his life have been lying to him on a regular basis these days. Including this woman now too. He had called her Kate, but he can bet that’s not even her real name.

“Kate?” he says in utter disbelief to the woman, who ignores him. He had called her Kate, but he can bet that’s not even her real name. She rounds the corner towards Fury’s body lying on the ground. 

“I’ve been assigned to protect you.” 

“On whose order?” he demands. The Agent comes across Nick on the ground and her face pales. 

“ _His_.” She rushes over to Nick who now lies sprawled and unconscious. She feels for a pulse before reaching for a walkie-talkie from her pocket and muttering into it. “Foxtrot is down. He’s unresponsive, I need EMTs.”

A voice on the other end of the line calls back. “Do we have a 20 on the shooter?”

Steve looks back to the window where he had seen the arm before and sees it disappearing into the darkness.

“Tell ‘em I’m in pursuit.” Steve mutters, before breaking off in a sprint out of the door and into the hall. The window straight ahead faces the other building of which he had seen the shooter on the roof. Without hesitation, he takes a running jump and smashes through the window, shield up in front of him, soaring over the rather sizeable gap between the two buildings and crashing through a window on the other side. 

Jumping to his feet as soon as he lands, he starts bolting through this office-looking floor, eyes on the ceiling above him where he can see through the open grates the assassin making his escape. Steve charges through countless doors, both wooden and glass, following the trail of the hostile and his heavy footsteps above him. Finally, after a few hot minutes in pursuit, he rounds the corner onto a long extended corridor, at the end of which is a large, single pane window. As he draws nearer and nearer, the shooter drops from the roof above him onto this lower roof that they are both now level on. The playing field has levelled. 

The shooter begins to run towards the edge of the building roof, just as Steve goes smashing through this last window, sending him rolling to the floor, but he steadies himself with ease and uses all his strength to launch his shield in a Frisbee-like throwing motion as hard as he can towards the cowardly assassin. 

Initially confident that he had him now, Steve is completely dumbfounded at what happens next. The shadowy figure turns, his metal arm outstretched, and _catches the shield in his hand._ The collision of metal on metal causes a loud, harsh ring to branch out from the point of contact, echoing over the rooftops of Washington DC. Steve has barely a second to register what has happened, and the cold, dead stare of the assassin of Nick Fury as he looks back at Steve, before the shield comes swinging back at him, and the force at which it does so pushes Steve’s feet back on the concrete, his whole body backwards towards the broken window, and every muscle in his body burns with the exertion of stopping this shield from toppling him. 

When he looks up, the mysterious man has completely disappeared. 

Steve runs to the edge of the building and looks down into the streets below, but all he sees is the dark, empty intersection of the roads, and the hazy yellow glow that the streetlamps cast onto the concrete below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dunnnnn!  
> Who is this mysterious man who has attempted to kill Director Fury? Who could possibly know???? Well apart from us and everyone who's ever watched The Winter Soldier or any of the following MCU movies...  
> But apart from that!! Mysterious man! Woo!!


	16. It's Just The Way Things Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is quite short i felt like it needed to end before I started up the talks with Steve and Alexander Pierce because there's hella dialogue.  
> At the moment Steve is still mad that Natasha lied to him about her mission and is really being a lil dick about it and treating Natasha like shit. He still loves her though, and Natasha is close to realising something along the same lines too...

Sugar for the Pill - Slowdive

Location: BPCH HOSPITAL, 38.8931° N, 76.9957° W  
Date: 09/26/2014

When the Natasha hears the news, she actually drops the glass she has in her hands. The shards splash up around her as it hits the floor, some jumping as high as her hand and slicing it open. She barely even feels the pain.

The invincible Nick Fury. She didn’t think he could ever be touched. The untouchable. Shot, critical condition, surgery.  
No one is safe now. She had never believed what Fury had warned her of would ever come to pass. 

The second closest thing she has to family. Probably now the first.

The drive to the hospital is a blur of confusion and pain and denial, because she cannot let this man who gave her a new life, a second chance, a fresh start, die without her there. 

When she pulls up amidst the swarm of police cars, she doesn’t even bother to park the sleek black car even remotely out of the way. No, she jumps straight out of it and runs towards the front doors of the hospital, following the signs as they come to direct her to the gallery of OR2. As she storms through the door, she sees Steve for the first time in days, leaning on his hands, staring intently through the glass. She joins him at his side, a reflex she should probably rid herself of before long. She can’t help it, it’s a habit. When she sees Nick, lain out bare on the operating table, blood staining the blue paper sheets, operating instruments glinting in the bright white light, the look of horror that she had plastered her face when she first heard the news, returns. 

“Is he gonna make it?” she murmurs, still refusing to make eye contact with Steve, scared of what she will see there.

“I don’t know.” he mumbles, barely audibly. 

The two watch the surgeons work in silence for a moment, before Natasha’s shaky voice starts up again.

“Tell me about the shooter.” 

“He’s fast. Strong.” Steve describes. Not incredibly helpful in her deduction, but better than nothing. Natasha could never have prepared for what he says next, however. “Had a metal arm.” 

Terror, disgust, dread, rises fast in Natasha’s chest, making her wildly nauseous. _No. No, please not him. Not again._  
She can see the glittering, shiny metal of his arm as clearly as if it were in front of her. The hand holding the gun, the bullet ripping through her skin. The nausea worsens. _No._

 _It can’t possibly be him. But what if it is?_ There is only one way to find out.

“Ballistics?” she asks Maria Hill, who has appeared beside them both. 

“Three slugs, no rifling, completely untraceable.” 

“Soviet made.” she finishes the description under her breath. She knows it all too well. 

“Yes.” Maria looks round in shock, but before she can say any more, all three agents’ attention are captured when a commotion from inside the operating room generates a slew of mechanical beeping. 

Natasha can only hear intermittent cries of ‘BP’s dropping!’, ‘Defibrillator!’ as they expose Nick’s chest and get ready to shock him. Natasha’s mouth falls open in shock horror as she realises what is happening. They’re losing him. She can’t let that happen.

“Don’t do this to me Nick.” she breathes, more to herself than to anyone else in the room around her. 

The doctors inject epinephrine and atropine into Nick’s central line, all eyes fixed anxiously on the SAT machine monitoring his heartbeat. No pulse is found.  
Besides Natasha, both Maria and Steve inhale and exhale anxiously, Maria’s eyes filling with tears. Natasha, however, will not let herself cry. She cannot give up hope on Nick yet. He can’t _do this to her!_ He is not supposed to die like this! How the hell is she supposed to carry on in S.H.I.E.L.D when the only leader she vowed she would ever follow, is dead?

Apparently it doesn’t matter, because the doctors’ shoulders are slumping, all eyes finding the ground dejectedly. And now she doesn’t have a choice because my heart hurts and her throat constricts and she can’t help but show the pain on her face because Nick is _dying._ In just a few moments, his present will shift to past, he will become that ‘person’ she knew. That person she knew that died. Is to was, has to had, here to gone. 

Hyper-aware of his presence around her, she feels Steve leave the room as she struggles not to break down. The doctors are de-gowning, stripping off their gloves, and calling it. It. The time of death. Because now he is dead.

She shouldn’t be surprised. These things happen all the time, it’s just the way things are. Somehow though, she never believed _he, the_ Nick Fury, could ever… _die._

“1:03 doctor.” 

1:03. The moment Nick Fury left the world.

* * *

Later, they lay his peaceful body on a table, covered by one single sheet. She stands helpless over him, acutely aware of Steve’s presence a little while behind her, but not as much as she used to be, because her heart is otherwise occupied at this moment, grieving for her mentor’s death. 

If there is any comfort in this horrific moment, it’s that she at least feels a little more in control of her emotions now. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, the old habit developed when she felt out of control, overwhelmed or upset kicking in. It still stays with her, year after year. 

She stares down at Nick’s still face, still in a certain amount of shock, that he is really _gone._ She can’t stop thinking about the first time they met, when Clint had brought her in, determined to use her skills for a better purpose. His appraising glance, looking her up and down. The grin in response to her quick, snappy attitude. _I like this one_ , he had said. _Don’t think you’re let off the hook for failing your mission though, Barton. Next time I send you to kill someone, make sure you do it properly. But for now, this little one should made an excellent addition to our team. Welcome, Agent Romanoff._

This time the tears are really coming, and she knows it. She doesn’t want him gone. She doesn’t want to exist in a world where he doesn’t, because she doesn’t know how to. He has always led her, been the closest thing she ever had to a father. At some points, the only support she had in her life came from him. And she never thanked him. Never stopped to realise how much she took for granted.

_Never said thank you._

She hears as though from the other end of a long tunnel, Maria come in, talking about them needing to take him. Take him away. Where she will never see him again. When her chest feels like it’s about to burst from the pressure her arms have around it, she releases herself, arms falling to her sides.

Steve moves forward to stand with her, to get her to leave his body so they can take it. But instead of dragging her back, Steve’s hand reaches out ever so gently, drifting towards Natasha’s, by her side, hidden by the hems of both agents’ jackets. His fingers are feather-light as they stroke Natasha’s fingers, a silent offer to take hold. 

“Natasha.”

Natasha’s heart beats erratically, panicking. Her throat is thick again as the tears pool around her eyes, threatening to fall with one single blink. Instinctively, she withdraws her hand, moving to place it on Nick’s forehead as a last farewell, and as a thank you she never said, all while murmuring under her breath to Steve.

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to cut me out and then come back whenever you like. If you had any idea… you have _no idea_ …”

She doesn’t finish, rage and devastation blazing through her body. How dare he ruin this moment for her. It doesn't matter whether she had wanted to take his hand or not, this moment is not about him. It is about Nick, who is dead.

Now feeling completely alone in this world, she turns on her feet and leaves the room as fast as she can, her heart now hardening to stone now that the farewell is done.

Steve follows her out immediately, calling after her, “Natasha!”

She whirls on the spot, incredulous at Steve’s behaviour and his audacity to come back here after abandoning her and their… friendship, after all she had done was her job. 

“Why was Fury in your apartment?” she demands.

Steve looks around, inhaling deeply and shrugging lightly. It almost too easy to see the lie forming in his brain as he buys for time. And after all that, all he can come up with is, “I don’t know.”

Rumlow appears behind Steve. “Cap. They want you back at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

He answers, “Yeah, gimme a second,” turning back to Natasha, but Rumlow insists.

“They want you now.”

Irritated, Steve tells Rumlow “ _Okay_ ,” and finally faces Natasha again.

She smirks at him, hiding the hurt she feels at his lie. “You’re a terrible liar, Rogers.” 

_Back to Rogers, now. No longer Steve._

It’s karma, she guesses. She lied to him, and now she is getting it back. It’s this all they have become now? Liars?

And with that, she turns her back on him and stalks down the hall, disappearing into the midst of EMT’s and S.H.I.E.L.D agents like a shadow into the wind. 

Steve watches her go, half kicking himself for letting her go again, half still reeling in confusion from the past few hours’ events.  
The flash drive in his pocket gifted to him by Fury, his last command not to trust anyone, his flat line on the table, the haunting stare of the assassin as he vanished into the night. 

When Fury had told him not to trust anyone, did he mean Natasha too? He thought Natasha was different, the exception to the rule, to _every_ rule he had ever built for himself, was he wrong? Wrong about her, like he had been before? Really, he’s no better himself.  
Both of them are trapped in this web of lies, each second twisting themselves tighter and deeper into it, until they will no long be able to get out. And Steve isn’t ready for that. 

_Don’t. Trust Anyone._ He had said.

But he loves her.

What to do, what to do, what to do. For now, this flash drive in his pocket is a target on is back, and it is screaming ‘come get me, come get me!’ and beckoning all his worse enemies forth, an invitation to kill him. The first step is to get rid of it. And as Steve’s gaze falls onto the vending machine being fixed next to him, he has just the idea of where to put it. 

When he joins Rumlow to head back to S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, his pocket is just a little lighter, and the vending machine he leaves behind just a little heavier.  
Let’s just say, if someone wants any bubble-gum any time soon, they might be greeted with an unpleasant surprise.  
It’s not permanent, and Steve is going to come back and get it, but for now he hopes that it will lie hidden in plain sight, for as long as he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da!  
> Did y'all like Steve's lil touchy hand thing? I thought it was cute and like sad at the same time.  
> I'm begging y'all,  
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	17. What's The Point In Playing a Game You're Gonna Lose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over 3000 hits! This is crazy! Love y'all 3000 ;)
> 
> Holy moly this took so long to write. The length of this chapter is literally twice the length of most of the others, mostly due to a combination of action sequences coupled with extensive dialogue. Never a good mix.  
> Anyway I am so so so so excited for the next chapter, because it is literally CRAMMED with Romanogers content! First there's THAT scene in the hospital (we all know the one) AND THEN THE MALL SCENE!!  
> I'm so hyped, honestly.  
> Enjoy!

Lies - MARINA

LOCATION: THE TRISKELION, DC, 38.8967° N, 77.0630° W  
DATE: 09/26/2014

Steve’s mind is still reeling by the time he arrives, fully suited up once again, back at the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, around midday. As he makes his way up to Alexander Pierce’s office, desperately trying to formulate his story in his head, he is once again thrown off course when he sees Kate, Agent 13 or whatever her real name is emerging from Alexander Pierce's office. How the hell had she managed to get here before him, assuming she had accompanied S.H.I.E.L.D to the hospital? Well, maybe that's it. She didn't. If she's undercover, she's not going to give away her position in the secret side of S.H.I.E.L.D by accompanying her boss to the hospital, is she? Not now S.H.I.E.L.D's compromised. Steve wonders if she knows about Nick’s passing. 

She shakes hands with Pierce and turns to exit down the corridor he occupies, as they pass, exchange glances, and nod cordially. She greets him as “Captain Rogers,” whereas he snaps back at her “Neighbour,”,showing he has not forgotten her easy betrayal and lies to him.

Steve shakes hands with Alexander Pierce, who introduces himself as such and the two exchange brief conversation before entering into the large open office. The office that used to be Nick’s.

Steve is handed a thick binder of photos, the first of which he sees when he opens it shows him a younger version of Nick and the man before him now in mid-conversation.

“That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met. When I was at the State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the S.H.I.E.L.D station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, "No, we'll negotiate." Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter.”  
Pierce talks to him from the other end of his office as he fumbles around with various papers and eventually makes his way over to Steve standing in a corner. The two take a seat together around a glass coffee table in the center of the room.

“So you gave him a promotion.” Steve assumes.

“I've never had any cause to regret it.” There is a brief pause and Steve’s eyes find anywhere to look but Pierce’s. “Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?

The question shocks Steve, but only mildly. The repeated words bring him back to the hospital corridor with Natasha and, remembering the response to his past answer, he tries a little harder to pull off a convincing lie this time. “I don’t know.” he shakes his head.

“You know it was bugged?”

“I did, because Nick told me.” Steve answers defensively.

“Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?”

Steve doesn't answer now, because this is something he hadn't seen coming, and Pierce sits back smugly, triumphant. More lies. The web is thickening. 

“I want you to see something.” Pierce continues, pressing a button which brings up a large screen behind Steve, which he turns to see. On it is the haggard face of Batroc, the missionary of the Lemerian Star, and he is being interrogated. The agent circling him questions him, “Who hired you, Batroc?”

“Is that live?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers.” 

Steve ignores the attempt at humour. “Are you saying he's a suspect? Assassination isn't Batroc's line.”

“No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Steve takes the file being handed to him from Pierces outstretched hand. 

“Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick his mother lived at 14-37.”

Steve looks up at this information, mind racing. “Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?”

“The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death.”

Anger bubbles in Steve, along with hesitancy and confusion about parts of this story that could seem plausible. He settles with a safe answer. 

“If you really knew Nick Fury you'd know that's not true.”

“Why do you think we're talking?” Pierce gets to his feet and walks away from Steve towards the wide glass window that looks out on DC. The same one Nick himself had gazed out of not too long ago too. “See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world, sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies.” From his position leaning on the glass, Pierce returns to face Steve and plants his hands in his pockets. “Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry.”

Pierce stays quiet after this, letting them mull in dull silence for a moment.

“Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?”

“He told me not to trust anyone.”

And if there's one person he is sure that this applies to, it is this man standing before him. Almost everyone else he has figured out. Apart from one person. 

“I wonder if that included him.”

The audacity of this man astounds Steve. Not deigning to dignify Pierce with his time any longer, Steve starts to wrap up. 

“I'm sorry. Those were his last words. Excuse me.” 

Steve picks up his shield, places it on his back and starts to make his way out of the office.

“Captain.” Steve turns reluctantly. “Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it... Anyone.”  
“Understood.”

Without a second more’s hesitation, he leaves the office as fast as he can.

* * *

A lot to think about. That’s what Steve has. Seems like that's the case most of these days anyway. The anger he had previously felt at Natasha is simmering down into a gentle hum, now that he is starting to need her help more and more. Soon it may not be a matter of whether he can trust her because he will need her either way.

And let's face it, it was never a choice. It's always her. He will always choose her.

When the elevator rises to his level, it is starkly empty and he takes advantage of this, drawing to the glass window walls of the box and staring out onto DC, intense concentration etching his face. First move is to get out of here. Second, find Natasha. And the flash drive. Okay, maybe flash drive second, Natasha third. Or both at the same time, and then they can both be the second step. One step. Second step. Okay cool. 

“Operations control.” he murmurs, and the machine confirms it. 

Just as the elevator doors are about to close, Rumlow and his Strike team enter. Steve recognises them because of Rumlow’s distinctive voice.  
“Keep all STRIKE personnel on site.”

“Understood.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Forensics.” Rumlow orders the elevator operator.

“Confirmed.” the computer answers.

Steve, still facing the window, turns as Rumlow greets him with a “Cap.”, greeting him back with the same cordiality.

“Rumlow.”

The Strike team gather in one corner of the elevator murmuring, as Steve centers himself in the middle of the back of the box. His skin feels strangely electric, the blood coursing like hot fire through his veins. It’s weird. He only ever feels like this when preparing for a battle. He attempts to calm himself, planting his hands over his front and taking an authoritative stance. 

The elevator doors close, the elevator sinks, slowly. Slower, and slower. Silent, and more silent. 

“Evidence Response found some fibres on the roof they want us to see. You want me to get the tac-team ready?” Rumlow finally says to Steve to break the silence. 

Steve keeps his voice cold and steady as he answers. “No, let's wait and see what it is first.”

As the elevator sinks lower and lower in the building, Steve notices one of the Strike agents grasping his gun in its holster rather tightly, which only arouses his suspicion more. His eyebrows furrow slightly, before his attention is diverted as the lift stops and more men enter from the floor they paused at. 

Carrying briefcases and murmuring in low voices, they crowd Steve, and he has to work his way to a comfortable position as they take up more room in the elevator. His eyes dart around, his heart hammering a tattoo against his ribs, warning him. Of what, however, he is still unsure. Once they have confirmed to the machine where they want to go, the elevator begins moving again, and the room settles into a near silence with the occasional chatter of voices from the men in suits. 

Rumlow turns his head back towards Steve behind him. “I'm sorry about what happened with Fury. Messed up, what happened to him.”

Steve stares coldly at the back of Rumlow’s head. “Thank you.” 

When he averts his gaze, his eyes are caught on a man to the right of him who is mid-conversation with another associate. Steve continues to stare at him, noticing a bead of sweat that crawls down his brow.  
In his head, alarm bells sound.

When the elevator doors open yet again, Steve sees yet more menacing men, this time in Strike team gear, standing just outside. They ask to go to records, and the elevator confirms this request.

Steve takes a good look around him, at the men holding briefcases, guns, varying types of suspicious objects as the pieces slowly fit together in his mind.

When the elevator doors close again, it feels ominously like they are sealing his fate as well as the entrance to the open floor ahead of them. He can't help but think, _here we go again,_ as he smiles softly up at the ceiling and raises his voice.

“Before we get started, does anyone wanna get out?”

At the behence of utter and complete silence, Steve nods. _Sounds about right._

However, before he can do anything else, the agent that had been last to enter the elevator whirls to face him, an electric rod blazing in his hand. He dives at Steve but misses, getting pulled to the floor as Steve is yanked out of the way by several other agents. Someone smashes the emergency stop button and the ring echoes over the grunts and shouts of the men as they pull Steve's arms away from him, pinning him back against a wall and removing his shield, utterly disarming him. With a vice like grip around his neck, Steve writhes under the hold of far too many men as one of them pulls the handle of the briefcase they had been holding, which morphs into a menacing, magnetic, silver cuff, obviously intended for Steve’s wrists. It had all happened so quickly.

Steve twists desperately under the grip of his captors, but to no avail, as with moderate difficulty, the cuff is slapped around his wrist and his arms pushed towards the wall. 

He lets out a long, drawn out cry as he resists the force pushing his arm against the wall. The limb hovers still in mid air, fighting equally the two forces pushing both ways. Steve thinks on his feet, yanking his fist down rather than to either of the two sides, using the momentum and distraction to knee a guard in the knees, funnily enough, and then elbow two other guards (not in the elbows) and knock them flying. 

The other cuff intended for his second hand goes flying to the nearest wall, its magnetism fixing it firmly there, unmoving. Now with more freedom to move, Steve kicks another agent in the chest and punches another one before the chokehold on him tightens and he is restricted. Using a free hand Steve grabs a hold of the man choking him and uses all his strength to launch him over his shoulder, flipping him over him and into the wall across from them. 

When Rumlow aims a kick at his chest, the move he takes to avoid it brings him just that bit too close to the wall, and the cursed magnetic handcuff goes zinging towards the wall behind him, effectively pinning him there. Steve pulls and pulls, using the strength of both hands and his entire upper body to wrench himself free, but to no avail, as before he can succeed he sees Rumlow coming at him again, this time with a crackling electric rod. 

He blocks him once, twice, but the third time Rumlow comes from behind and the arm strung up against the wall can do nothing to protect Steve from the onslaught of electricity that courses its way through his body and Steve has to screw his face up against the pain.

With a scream, Steve throws his elbow back into Rumlow’s face and heaves another man who had got up to fight into the corner where Steve barley registers there is a camera where Jasper Sitwell watches the action unfold. 

In the time it takes before more men get to their feet again, Steve heaves and heaves against the cuff, but it will not budge. He hits every man who stands back up, even using one man’s own rod to electrocute another, avoiding that death stick like the plague. At one point he uses the cuff on the wall to fly up and into the air, swinging around and hitting both men who crumple to the floor.

When they fall, he focuses his attention back on this damned cuff, jumping to press his feet against the wall and prise the metal ring off the wall. His face turns red in exertion, but finally the cuff is moving _off the wall._  
It finally comes completely away, and the momentum with which Steve is left carries him through a back flip to land, both feet flat on the floor, in the middle of the elevator. Elbowing two men behind him to the ground, he turns again, to be faced with Rumlow holding not one, but two electric rods.

Oh, _man_.

“Woah, big guy.” Rumlow holds his hands up, but his voice is patronizing. “I just want you to know, Cap, this ain't personal.”

He finishes the line in a shout, diving towards Steve, who manages to block his blow with one hand, but fatally leaves his midsection unguarded. Rumlow uses this and plunges his second rod deep into Cap’s stomach, pretty much frazzling his organs. Or it certainly feels that way to Steve, who bellows loudly, swiping to punch Rumlow but missing, and earning himself a second round of electrocution in the stomach. The hot fire that buzzes inside him, blooming pain throughout his body feels marginally different to the 'electric' tingling he had felt when Rumlow entered the elevator. Oh, the irony.

When Rumlow runs out of energy to keep the rod pressed into Steve, Steve uses all _his_ remaining force to push Rumlow away, lifting him up with his own two hands and hurling Rumlow up into the ceiling, where he collides with a sickening crunch before falling back down towards the floor.

Finally, _finally,_ no one gets up to counter him. They all lie either unconscious, seriously injured, or both. Just the way Steve likes it. 

He addresses Rumlow’s body lying face down on the floor. 

“It kinda _feels_ personal.”

When he spots his shield on the floor next to his feet, he steps on it, sending it up into the air, where he catches it with his arm and settles it back into his grip. With one last punt, he uses it to slice the metal cuff from his wrist, before resuming the elevator’s trip down to the next floor.

However, when the doors open, he is greeted with a couple dozen more armed soldiers, all painting their guns at him. 

Just when he’d thought it was over.

He swings on his feet and slices the thick metal cords suspending the elevator, sending it hurtling down a couple floors where it goes screeching to a halt. When he prises the doors apart and sees more soldiers sprinting down the corridor towards him, he closes them again hastily.

Swearing profusely in his head and not knowing what to do, Steve looks around the elevator, eyes falling to the window that faces east, towards the ground. There is a large glass ceiling that forms the roof of the atrium not too far down from here. Okay, when he says not too far down, he means far too far for a normal human. But just maybe, he could do it.

Drowning out the voices of soldiers ordering him to open the door, he strides the length of the elevator, turns and suddenly leaps out of the window, shattering the glass, and soaring into the air. 

He plummets immediately, and in reaction scrunches into a ball on top of his shield as he goes crashing through the glass ceiling at top speed and hits the floor with a sickening, agonizing thud, the noise his shield makes as it collides with the ground deafening him. 

People around him scream, running away from the source of the disruption - him. Groaning, he braces himself before getting to his feet. The shock waves roll through his body, his head pounding and the bruises making themselves very clear on their due arrival tomorrow. 

As soon as he is up, he stumbles into a sprint away from the mountains of shattered glass and towards where he knows he can find a good motorbike.

By the time the doors of the garage have begun to inch closed, Steve's helmet is smashed onto his head and he is soaring through the closing gap between the doors on his motorbike, landing on the tarmac smoothly with not so much as a jolt. 

Ahead of him, the edge of the bridge begins to sprout spikes, obviously a way to stop him escaping, but Steve does not slow down. Eyes squinting towards the horizon, he moves steadily closer and closer to the end of the bridge. Just then, a large Quintet comes careering in front of him, blocking his path. 

“Stand down, Captain Rogers! Stand down!” a voice booms from it.

Guns drop from the belly of the ship, rotating and clicking menacingly into place. Undaunted, Steve leans forward and revs the engine of his motorbike, inching it forward faster and faster against the cities of ‘Stand down!’ echoing from the ship. A plan is forming itself in his mind.

The canons release fire, a spray of bullets fighting towards the road in front of his wheels, but he swerves agilely to avoid them as they come, debris bouncing off the ground and scraping him at intervals. 

When the Quinjet is within the required distance, he reaches behind to grasp his shield and flings it out in front of him, towards the jet. It dives into the right engine, exploding it in a bloom of sparks and flames. The ship sags as the propeller fails, the shield lodge firmly in its midst. 

Meanwhile, Steve approaches them at an alarming rate. At the last second, he squeezes the brakes with all the force he can, which sends his body flying into the air. He positions it into a dive and aims neatly for the roof of the ship, which is exactly where he lands. Rolling a couple times to lose the momentum, he arrives where his shield lies delved in the metal engine. He rips it out and the ship consequently goes tilting in the other direction, causing him to fall towards the ground. However, he uses his shield in his hands to lodge into _another_ metal part of the ship, from which he hangs as he fights the force of air that pushes him away. Even with little momentum, he manages to flip himself over the edge of the ship and back onto the surface of it, shield coming with him. Now on a somewhat steady surface, he slings his shield towards both wings sitting on top of the ship, where it collides with one and bounces off at angle to hit the other one opposite it, before flying over the edge. The carnage left behind causes the ship to jolt again, struggling to remain balanced in the air, but it doesn't matter to Steve, for he has followed his shield off the back of the ship, grabbing hold of it and rolling through the air before landing elegantly back on the tarmac, shield taking the weight of the blow, and making him look really damn cool in the process. 

With one look back at the Quinjet speeding towards the bridge with a deafening crash, a mangled mess of metal, Steve departs the scene, a smirk tracing his face. 

_That is how you single-handedly take down a Quinjet, ladies and gentlemen._

When he has safety gained distance from the Triskelion and is sure he is not being followed, he finally lets himself think.

The next step is to get the flash drive. But before he can do that, he has to get rid of this uniform. He has zero doubt that it is bugged, and will hinder him beyond imagination if he leaves it on. Then he can go back to the hospital, and get the flash drive.

And _then,_ he can find Natasha.

Because although more and more people in his inner circle are turning on him every second, he knows deep inside him that there is one constant in his life, to which he has been more than unfair to in the past days. And that constant is the one exception to Fury’s rule. Natasha. He can always trust Natasha. 

Looks like it's her and him against the world again. Just like all the times before. But it's okay, it's not like they’re not used to it. They have even managed to find a steady rhythm in running from the law, a comfort in having such a small bubble of just him and her, just them.

Little do they know, it is this that will allow them to find each other in the pitch black world they are about to unknowingly enter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a pain in the ass to write, and I hate so much about it. I hate the detailed fight scenes that are hard af to write. I hate the mumbly dialogue which (up until now) is really hard to translate. I hate the lack of Romanogers in this (blegh) and I hate the amount of excessive plot in it. Ugh. Had to be done though. Been putting off this chapter for a whillle.
> 
> On a side note it took me 17 chapters and purchases of multiple dvds and associated streaming platform subscriptions to realise the transcripts for each film are free online and i have been dialoguing hours of all these characters speech for nothing. I really am the epitomy of dumb.


	18. You Tell Me About Your Past, Thinking Your Future Was Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been so, SO excited to write this chapter, as well as the following ones in the mall. The song for this chapter was just perfect, and was part of how I got the title for this book. “Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much.” And all of the other incredible lyrics from that song, ugh. Anyways, I hope you enjoy reading this chapter just as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> Also idk but i feel like this may be a teeny weeny bit OOC for Natasha, just because idrk know how she would react to falling in love, it’s not exactly shown in the movie (because she’s never actually in love, if you call Brutasha love i WILL forcefully murder you) but yeah sorry if it seems a lil OOC, drop a comment on what you think she would have been like instead if you feel like it.

All Too Well - Taylor Swift

LOCATION: BPCH HOSPITAL, 38.8931° N, 76.9957° W  
DATE: 09/26/2014

In the time it had taken Steve to escape from S.H.I.E.L.D's clutches, Natasha was already a step ahead of him, securing covers and going slowly, subtly into hiding. She knows she is less of a concern to S.H.I.E.L.D than Steve, but she also knows that if she doesn't hide now, they will come after her in due course.

 _Steve_.

Ah yes, the subject of almost all of her thoughts in the past day and a half. It was like it taunted her, all these undaunted, unfamiliar memories, ideas, mocking her, and the fact that she has no idea how to cope with them.

The truth is, there has always been something there. Natasha was stupid to ignore it. She remembers the first time they met like it was yesterday: his polite greeting, and the smile that actually shocked her with how dazzling it was. And all the times after it: the silence in the room as he had bandaged her up, his fingers brushing her skin, the electricity it sparked. Every day since, in the time they had spent in each other’s company during their missions in Washington DC. She remembers it all so clearly, and knows she will never forget any of it for as long as she will live. She had never been so happy. Even thinking about it now, she can't help but smile. All those late nights out on the town, linked arms as they stumble drunk down the streets, stopping to do a hopscotch chalked on the pavement by a child in a previous time. Countless games of Scrabble sprawled on the floor of Steve’s apartment, Natasha swatting him when he manages to beat her again and again. That one day, where Steve took Natasha to Brooklyn, to the apartment where he used to live, and told her what had changed since he was there. All-nighters, talking about their pasts, their losses. James, 'Bucky', Barnes in Steve’s wartime days, Natasha’s family, and the constant guilt she feels as a consequence. The peace in the midnight hour as they comforted each other, falling asleep in each others’ arms and waking in them when the sun inevitably rose in the morning. It was remarkable that in all those two years they had managed to not once bring up the subject of what was between them. All that time, wasted. 

The truth is, no one knows her like him. And yet he still doesn't realise what she feels for him. Or maybe he does, and is simply ignoring it. It’s strange, how often they barely need to talk to communicate and understand each other, and yet when it comes to _them_ , they don't even know how to bring it up. Dancing around the conversation, desperate not to have to confess what they feel for each other.

Because it's true. She _does_. She does feel something for him. What it is, she hesitates to call it, because she has never felt this way for anyone. Ever. not even close. Never knew her family long enough, had friends close enough, to feel… _love_. 

_Blegh._ Natasha hates that word. It practically _screams_ vulnerable, weak. That's what she was always taught, anyway. Love is weakness. Love is for children. A toy, to be played with, and then thrown away. The belief was drilled into her head as a young child. The belief that there is never time enough for love in your life. And that there never will be. 

So that's what Natasha has been battling for almost every hour since turning her back on Steve in that hospital corridor. What she feels, what to do, how to cope. Coping seems impossible when she fears this feeling so well. But it's not exactly like she can get rid of it. She has tried, believe me. Tried the box technique, shoving it in and slamming the lid shut. But then he appears in her dreams, with a magic key, releasing all those memories that torture her with their hidden meanings and complex messages. 

And so she has surrendered, essentially. Not much else to do. No big revelation, no determination to protect him at all costs, mainly because she knows he is capable of doing that for himself. No, just this gradual realisation, ending with a small pop. Oops, the Black Widow failed her mission. She fell in love.

Every time she thinks that word, she almost gags. Hey, it's a reflex. Hopefully, it’ll pass. Because her feelings for Steve sure as hell aren't going to. 

Natasha knows Steve’s next move is to return to the hospital. Stupid idiot decided putting the flash drive in a vending machine was a good idea. 'Hiding in plain sight', my ass. She has been watching it in the hours elapsed since Nick’s… death, and luckily it hasn't been spotted. She plans to retrieve it once her covers are set and ready, and she has everything she may need on her person. 

Once she has done that though, there is no excuse not to leave for the hospital, but Natasha still seems oddly stubborn and reluctant not to. 

_Get it together, Agent,_ she chides herself, standing at the door. After a few seconds and one long, deep breath, she wrenches the front door open and disappears into the early afternoon light.

* * *

After having swapped his suit with dark undercover clothes and left it in the duffle bag of a highschool student in the gymnasium of a school, Steve finally makes his way back to the hospital, just as Natasha had planned.  
When he arrives, walking as surreptitiously as possible down the very same corridor he had tracked barely two days prior, his hood is pulled low over his head and his hands are in his pockets. The vending machine is tucked snugly into a cubby in the wall, and when he stands in front of it, he can see the squeaky clean reflection of his face staring back at him in the glass. What he can't see, however, is the flash drive, right where it _should_ be. He had left it behind two strips of bright pink bubblegum, right where he is looking now. But all he can see is the empty slot where it should have been, hidden behind the gum. 

Just as he begins to panic, a reflection appears in the glass behind him. Red hair, smug smirk, popping a pink bubble of gum with her tongue. Natasha chews her gum, staring at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes and a grin flashing on her face. Steve whirls to face her, angry that she had caused the intense panic that had filled him earlier, and that she has somehow stolen the drive and gotten there before him. Suddenly painfully aware that he has to uphold the cover he had constructed, he stills, before grabbing Natasha by the arm and pushing her and himself into a room off the side of the corridor.

He slams her body against a wall, whipping his hood down from his head in the same second. Natasha is alarmed by Steve’s forcefulness, but she doesn't feel in danger in any way. She knows that Steve would never willingly hurt her. He just wants information.

“Where is it?” he demands.

“Safe.” she answers just as fast, their conversation turning into a series of shots fired in quick succession. 

“ _Do better_.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Why would I tell you?” Steve snaps in her face, their noses only inches apart, the sting of her previous betrayal still aching in the pit of his stomach. Apparently the memory of this shows in his face, as realisation dawns on Natasha’s face.

“Fury gave it to you, why?” she concludes. Her eyes are boring into his, her gaze so intense Steve feels embarrassed to be catching it. He suspects with the rage burning through him, however, that his gaze must be just as strong.

“What’s on it?” he pushes.

“I don’t know.”

“Stop, _lying!_ ” Steve hisses, his grip on her arms tightening. His fingers dig into her skin and Natasha is _extremely_ aware of it. In different circumstances, perhaps this situation would have ended differently. But Natasha needs to focus. It _is_ hard to do though, when their faces now hover barely two inches apart, and Natasha's eyes keep mistakenly travelling down to Steve’s lips of their own volition.

“I only act like I know everything, Rogers!” she says defensively, now getting angrier at Steve’s insistence and mistrust of her.  
Steve glances anxiously behind him, to the corridor through the door they had fatally left open, practically inviting people to see them, recognise them, call on Steve Rogers, the fugitive. When it seems clear, he turns back to Natasha.

“Bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?” So many secrets, so many lies. So much more than he had initially thought. It gets harder and harder to forgive Natasha every time she reveals something new that she lied to him about before. 

Natasha struggles to answer, her mouth hovering open, trying to find the right words that won’t anger Steve even more. A straight yes certainly won't do. 

“Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you.” 

If possible, Natasha feels the levels of uncontrollable heat in the room rising again, and her eyes drift to his lips even more than before. Steve suddenly pushes her back up against the wall again roughly, his teeth gritted as he snarls,

“ _I'm not gonna ask you again!_ ”

Natasha has hardly ever seen this side of Steve before, and it is frightening. She doesn't like it. This side is something he reserves only for interrogating enemies. With shock, she realizes that this is exactly what he must see her as. Hurt is all she feels for a moment, before she deescalates the situation so Steve doesn't get overly worked up.

“I know who killed Fury.” she murmurs.

Steve’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. This information seems to arouse his curiosity enough to reduce his anger, and he moves back slightly, the gap between them widening. His hands fall from her upper arms, sloping down to rest around the crook of her arms. Still around her, still refusing to let go. She continues, determined to keep Steve’s resolved calm.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over _two dozen_ assassinations in the last _fifty_ years.” Natasha elaborates, glancing occasionally out of the door to check that they are still going unnoticed, before returning to Steve’s intense gaze. 

“So he’s a ghost story.” Steve mocks.

Natasha doesn't open up about her past. It's a rule. But she knows, as does Steve, that that rule was demolished in DC. From now on, Steve is the exception. He always is. The only exception. And so telling him is not an issue. 

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him... straight through me.”  
Natasha pulls up her t-shirt to expose her flat belly, where a large puckered scar sits to the right of her belly button. 

Where Steve's mind had first gone somewhere very dark in the gutter, it now sits in a state of shock at seeing this souvenir of Natasha’s past. Where before it had all been stories, here lies physical evidence, remains of her experiences. It makes it all strangely, sharply, horribly, real.

Natasha looks back up at Steve with that same mischievous glint in her eyes. “Soviet slug, no rifling.'' She quotes the same details of the gun and bullet model that had been told to her in reference to Fury’s assassination. Same shooter, same gun. “Bye bye bikinis.” she smirks.

Steve almost rolls his eyes and looks at her disdainfully. “Yeah, I bet you look _terrible_ in them now.” he says sarcastically. Like she could ever look terrible in a bikini. The image that is placed in his mind as a result of that response makes his cheeks pink up and he discards the image immediately before blood has time to run south.

Natasha smiles faintly back at him, this time her eyes falling to his lips and staying there. Her throat feels dry and the pit of her stomach feels hot with desire. How much she wants to kiss him right now. There is a silence, as the two agents stand less than a foot apart, both foolishly resisting the urge to close the gap and kiss the other. It is over before it has even begun.

“Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried.” Natasha continues slowly, ending the heated moment, pulling the flash drive she had previously retrieved out of her pocket and holding it up between them. “Like you said, he's a ghost story.” 

Steve’s gaze fixes on the flash drive, obviously thinking. Thinking of what to do next, where to go, whether to take her, and how long he can keep his hands off her. He is always going to wait for her to make the first move, it's a practice ingrained in him from his younger days. But she is really testing him, and he doesn't know how much longer he can hold out.

 _Two can play at this game_. Natasha’s eyes still lingering on his lips, Steve takes the flash drive from her hands slowly, taking care to touch Natasha's hand for just a _little_ longer than necessary, before finally relieving it from her completely. 

“Well, let's find out what the ghost wants.” he murmurs in a velvety kind of voice that makes Natasha want to melt into the floor.

And without another word, Steve ushers Natasha out of the room in front of him and the two disappear into the hustle-bustle of the hospital like shadows, just like Natasha had done before, leaving no trace.  
It was as though they had never been there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW. Okay, that was a lot more hot than i realised. I can't believe I just wrote an entire 2.4k word chapter on a scene less than 2 minutes long. I did have a lot I wanted to say about this chapter but I've forgotten most of it now. Oh well.  
> Also, woo! Natasha finally realised she’s in love with Steve! Congrats girl, we know u got issues but you overcame them like a rockstar!  
> Oh and by the way in this chapter their love seems a lot more sexual than i intended but i mean… the sexual tension in that scene _was_ off the charts. I think, in this movie and book, with the exception of the sort of 'thrill of forbidden love' in this chapter, it will be a lot more of an emotional, deep, connecting, love that's probably all round more wholesome than sexual. We will get to the sexual side too. In due course. These two need to find each other first though.  
> Lmao i loved this i hope you did too


	19. Borrowed a Love That Never Came

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie I think my brain just about imploded writing this chapter I was so excited. I just - snbhkasbkjf i love them ugh. I originally had Fine Line by Harry Styles as the song but then this one came on shuffle and idk it just went better I guess. Made me feel sum tingz.  
> Fun fact - the mall scene was actually filmed in a real mall in Cleveland, Ohio, called Town City Center. I considered using this location in the book, sending them over there ‘on the run’, but then after that they visit Camp Lehigh which is all the way in Buckinghamshire so i decided to just keep the locations in DC and not follow where they were actually filmed. I chose the location of a mall in DC, but if you wanted to visit the same mall that Cap and Widow did the dirty (jk they just kissed) in then go look it up, it's in Ohio. Town City Center.

Carry You - Novo Amor

LOCATION: TCC MALL, WASHINGTON DC,38.9005° N, 77.0256° W  
DATE: 09/26/2014 (still)

By the time Steve and Natasha have made it to a large local mall in the outskirts of Washington DC, afternoon is well upon then, and they don’t have a lot of time before night falls and they have nowhere to go. For this reason, the two make their way through the mall floors with a certain amount intense speed, painfully aware of the clock ticking like a deafening time bomb in their ears.

Natasha, who is skilled and experienced at being on the run, strolls casually through the crowds next to Steve, who is doing the complete opposite, constantly looking around them for S.H.I.E.L.D agents or the Strike team. She almost rolls her eyes, but refrains, for Steve’s sake.  
America’s Golden Boy has never had to run from the law, she can’t blame him for that. 

As they pass a waterfall around which a group of teenagers giggle, Natasha directs Steve under her breath.  
“First rule of going on the run is don’t run, walk.”

“If I run in these shoes, they’re gonna fall off.” Steve says gruffly, eyes returning front. Natasha smiles at Steve's innocence and naivety as her heart does a mini dance, but she ignores it.  
She leads Steve to a large Apple store, where they walk in to find a Macbook Pro in the midst. Natasha’s intentions are to use a rogue computer that doesn't yet belong to anyone to scan the files on the drive without being traced through the owner of the computer. Because there is none. _Genius._

As she pulls open the laptop she has chosen, Steve hovers nervously over her shoulder. As is every time Steve is in close proximity, Nat's nerves are on edge, noticing his every movement in accordance to how close he is to her. Natasha can feel his breath on her neck, and it sends chills up and down her spine. However, she brings her attention back to the task at hand, determined to get through this high tension situation before she can think about anything to do with Steve. 

“The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up S.H.I.E.L.D will know exactly where we are.” Natasha notes as she boots up the laptop. 

“How much time do we have?” Steve asks, still surveying the shop, on the lookout for agents, not unlike a meerkat in the way he moves. 

“Uhh… about nine minutes from...” she pulls out the drive and inserts it into a port on the side of the laptop. It lights up a pretty blue colour. “...now.”

Unbeknownst to Steve and Natasha, several Strike squads have just been dispatched to the mall in which Natasha and Steve are currently in. _The chase has begun._

Back in the Apple store, Natasha continues to work on decrypting the file on the computer, while Steve keeps a lookout for the agents dispatched by S.H.I.E.L.D to track down and bring them in. The fear is visible in his eyes, and every part of him feels on edge. If he fails, it may end in both their deaths.

“Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands.” Natasha murmurs, hands flying across the touchpad, keys clicking frantically. Behind her, Steve adjusts his position, moving to lean on his hand lying on the desk, his body consequently getting dangerously close to Natasha’s back, almost enough to break her concentration.

“Can you override it?” Steve says under his breath.  
Natasha tips her head in silent judgement. 

“The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. _Slightly._ ” she glances back at Steve, not wanting him to think that she can be bested by this pathetic computer’s intelligence. 

As the clock continues to tick, Steve’s tension levels spike sporadically throughout his body, his heart thumping loudly against his ribs. He hopes it isn't loud enough to hear. If anyone can hear it though, it will be Natasha. Her head is practically resting on it.

“I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from.” Natasha rattles off under her breath, fingers continuing to dance with incredible speed across the keyboard. However, before she can finish the command code, a store employee comes up to them from behind.

“Can I help you guys with anything?” the young man says cheerfully, with a bordering-on-overly-friendly manner. 

Leaning over to Steve, Natasha embraces him and puts on a wide, warm smile for the assistant.  
“Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations.”

At her touch, Steve’s body explodes with sensation. Before, touch was such an easy thing for them, but now, every moment of contact, however brief, sends sparks flying through him. Flustered at the sudden reaction from his body at her embrace, Steve stammers,

“Right...We’re getting married.” At the prompt of speech, his head is filled with images of red hair and a white dress, vows in a large cathedral and rings that glint in the sunlight. His heart cries out with longing for it, but he stifles the idea with a determination rivalling embarrassment. Natasha has broken away from Steve and has returned to the computer, so now it's up to Steve to distract and get rid of this sales assistant.

“Congratulations. Where you guys thinking about going?” the young man asks, his waist-length blonde hair swishing as he sways on his feet. His eyes fall towards the computer, which Steve automatically leans to block from view, glancing at it as he does so. He sees that Natasha has managed to trace the signal to somewhere in New Jersey.

“...New Jersey.” he says, sighing and face-planting internally. He was never good at this undercover stuff, it always spooked him out. It was always Natasha who was the mastermind at this sort of stuff, got them where they needed to be. Left to his own devices, Steve floundered.

“Huh.” the employee says as Steve nods awkwardly. Suddenly, the young man’s eyes widen, finally properly surveying Steve and taking all of him in. Alarms ring in Steve’s head. They have been recognised, and need to get out of there, _now._

However, Steve could never have prepared for what would come out of the employee’s mouth instead.  
“...I have the _exact same_ glasses.”

Relief floods Steve as Natasha speaks up sardonically from behind them, “Wow, you two are practically twins.”  
Luckily the employee doesn't seem to sense the sarcasm in Natasha's voice, something only Steve has trained to recognise, and scoffs, 

“Yeah, I wish. Specimen.” he uses his hands to gesture to Steve’s bulky form as he backs away. Steve clenches his jaw, as if he’s heard it all before. “Uh...if you guys need anything, I've been 'Aaron.'” 

The assistant holds up his badge to show them, before returning to the main part of the store to help other customers. Steve thanks him as he goes, before whirling back to face Natasha. When she starts giggling he swats her on the arm until she goes back to obediently honing in on the location, a deliberate straight face plastered determinedly on her face. 

Time passes and Steve gets more and more tense, the ticking clock getting louder and more insistent in his head.  
“You said nine minutes, come on.” he hisses in Natasha's ear, but she is unfazed.

“Shh, relax.” she draws out the last syllable into a quiet hiss as her brows furrow in concentration, used to dealing with an agitated Steve. After a few intense seconds and yet more frantic typing, she exclaims triumphantly under her breath. “Got it.”

On the screen the map of New Jersey flickers and zooms in closer, and closer, until it finds and stills on ‘Wheaton, NJ’. Natasha looks proudly up at Steve, but her expression falters as Steve moves closer to the screen, staring at it a mixture of dread and disbelief.

“You know it?” she asks him concernedly. 

There is danger in Steve’s deep voice when he answers. “I used to.”

Natasha waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn't. Instead, he yanks the drive out of the computer socket and grabs her arm. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The two manage to exit the Apple store without arousing any more suspicion, but as soon as they descend into the pell-mell of busy shoppers, it is clear they are in trouble. 

“Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro.” Steve mutters under his breath, still agitatedly looking left and right, and making a right mess of being undercover, in Natasha's opinion. _Alright, time to take over._

“Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said.” she says equally quietly.

At first Steve thinks it was a trick of the eyes, or rather the ears, or that he’s dreaming, or that this is some horrible trick, because Natasha did _not_ just say that to him.  
“What?” he asks, dumbfounded,

“ _Just do it._ ”

So he does. He puts his arm around Natasha and brings her close. She leans into the gesture, and their heads move close together. The movement is so easy and feels so right that Steve can't believe it isn't real. Why is something that feels this right not a reality? On cue, just as the two agents approaching them pass, Steve chuckles. They continue past and Steve thinks they may have just managed to get away with it. 

His arm still around Natasha, he glances behind them to see the men are carrying on like nothing has happened. _Phew._ Steve realises Natasha hasn't moved out from under his arm and he looks down at her, where she stares at the ground they walk on. He nudges her arm with the hand sitting around her shoulder.

“Hey. You okay?” 

She nods back, too fast to be an answer, more like an instinct. 

Inside, Natasha is battling the same demons that usually torment Steve in all his wakeful hours. When Steve had put his arm around her, she hadn't felt even the slightest bit uncomfortable. She would have thought that since she realized she loved Steve, she would have balked at even the suggestion of him near her, but it is now, and she isn't. In fact, she wants it.  
And for the first time, the smallest part of her thinks he does too.

When they approach the escalator that takes them down a floor, they are forced to break apart, and Natasha takes the lead as they board it, still in a daze from her trance. So much so, that she doesn't realise Rumlow is coming up on the escalator adjacent to them until it is nearly too late. She spins to face Steve, her previous daydreams making her groggy and her thoughts slow. As a consequence, she ends up saying the very first thing that comes to mind.

“Kiss me.” 

“ _What?_ ” Steve exclaims, shock leaving him gawking. 

Natasha attempts to follow up her word vomit with a valid excuse.  
“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

“Yes, they do.” Steve agrees with her blindly, still unable to comprehend what he had just said to her. 

Natasha fights not to roll her eyes, and instead brings Steve’s head down to her level as their lips connect.

It’s like fireworks explode in both of their chests. Steve's hand instinctively finds Natasha’s waist as she deepens the kiss, bringing Steve’s body as close to her as she can. Their bodies touch, two puzzle pieces a perfect match, the proximity of them both now a cause of celebration instead of discomfort. This kiss feels like a breath of fresh air after months underwater, and is something the two of them have both silently dreamt of for a long time.

Natasha holds Steve’s face in her hands as, reluctantly, the two finally break apart. Rumlow has zoomed straight past them without a second glance, and once again they have escaped by the skin of their teeth. As another round of fireworks explode in Natasha's chest in celebration, she turns triumphantly to face the moving direction of the escalator again. 

“You still uncomfortable?” she asks, a smirk begging to break on her face as she descends the escalator to the side of the row of people. 

“'S not exactly the word I would use.” Steve says, more to himself than to Nat as he follows her down the escalator. 

What word _would_ he use? Well, how about a combination of a few? Shocked, ecstatic, exuberant, exhilarated, smug. Or just, ‘BLARGFGSJJSIEIKJSI’, because that just about sums up what seems to be surging through his mind right about now. 

He still can't comprehend it, as he follows her like a lost puppy out of the front doors of the mall.

 _He kissed Natasha Romanoff._

Oh boy, if only Steve knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da!! They finally got themselves together and kissed lmao. We've all been waiting for it. Next chapter is when we really delve into AU type shit, they gonna do some more kissing and talking and maybe even declare their feelings for one another... *gasp* dun dun dunnnn! Keep reading for more!  
> I wrote a paragraph on Natasha and Steve's differences when it comes to situations like this so that's below if for any reason you wanna read it:  
> I think Steve and Nat’s strategic and combatic differences are emphasised in this chapter a lot. Natasha is very experienced in this field of being on the run/ being sneaky, and knows how to play it. Steve mostly looks to fight his way out as a rule of thumb, a method he was trained to use and one that doesn't usually fail him. He does always use it though, even when sometimes it isn't suitable or useful. Natasha, however, is much more skilled in this side of the arts, in terms of tactic and strategy. She knows how to adapt to a situation and use the means necessary and ones available to get out of a situation with minimal casualties and littlest scene possible. KGB training probably, but I don't think they taught her how to avoid casualties the way she does. That is just a part of her. And something which i love about her too. Despite her background given to her from the KGB, she still manages to find herself and doesn’t lose her identity. Everything they teach her, she learns a different thing to counter it. A better thing. And that is how she got through her time in the KGB.By doing her best version of a balance she could in the world she lived in and the life she was given. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.


	20. We'll Be a Fine Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi so um this is my second attempt at uploading because AO3 crashed the first time and um imma cry it lost my work so i had to write it again. Anyway here y'all go.  
> Enjoy?

Fine Line - Harry Styles

LOCATION(S): TCC MALL, WASHINGTON DC, 38.9005° N, WHEATON, NJ, 39.3583° N, 74.4374° W  
DATE: 09/26/2014 (it's a long day alright)

From the moment Steve and Natasha escape the stiflingly busy mall into the fresh air of Washington DC, the overwhelming clarity of what just happened in that building hits Steve with the force of a freight train, leaving him with a case of uncontrollable smiling. He looks ahead of him, where Natasha has already crossed the road and is strolling across the grass on the other side. Her back is to him, but when she turns briefly to see where he is, Steve can see she is smiling too.

He breaks into a jog as he crosses the road to reach her, but she speeds up in retaliation, forcing him to pursue her through a stretch of glass and into an alleyway between two of a long line of small shops. There, she stops, looks behind her, and waits for Steve to catch up. She is breathless, even though she has been walking rather leisurely to this spot, and feels lightheaded. She knows it has nothing to do with the movement.

When Steve reaches her, the two are both smiling goofily, not troubling to hide their feelings anymore. Natasha moves to lean her back against the brick wall of the side of one of the buildings in the alleyway, looking up at Steve as he stands over her. For a moment, the two simply stand there, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Natasha should have known. Steve would always wait for her to make a move, no matter who caught feelings first. Always the gentlemen. Now she knows that he may feel the same way however, there is no point in hiding anymore.

“I have wanted… to do that… for a _very,_ long time.” she whispers unashamedly up at Steve, who can’t help but smile in response. Natasha’s hands clam up with sweat behind her back, next to the wall, something she has never experienced before. She moves them to place on Steve’s chest, where they both stare at the place she has laid them. There, they are dwarfed by the broad expanse of his chest, but Natasha can still hear Steve’s heartbeat, fast and irregular, under the clothing. As a result of _her._

She feels free, and lucky, and blessed to love Steve, where before she had felt embarrassed, ashamed. She feels happy to feel the way she does, and there is something so incredibly liberating about it. _Freedom._

Steve reaches a hand to cup Natasha’s cheek, then uses a finger to bring her chin up from his chest to face him, where their eyes do not break contact.

“You’re not the only one.”

He whispers this line, and then slowly leans in. This time, when their lips meet, it feels like magic. Like the right first kiss. All the other kisses Natasha has ever had to do before this do not compare when it comes to this. Every other kiss before this, the right kiss, doesn't count. Because only now has she had the privilege of the right first kiss. And she is in love with it.

Steve’s hand is warm on Natasha’s face as she moves in closer, her hand finding his neck as he clutches her waist. The two bodies mold together to become one tangled mess, leaning together against the brick wall of this run down building in Washington DC, blissfully unaware of the danger they are in, and with only one focus in their mind, that being one another. 

For the moment, everything else can wait. The only thing that matters now is each other. 

When they finally break apart, Steve presses his forehead against Natasha’s, and they both pant gently. Yes, indeed, it was like coming up for fresh air. It seems stupid to Steve that he has been witholding this from himself for so long. How can something so supposedly wrong, feel this right?

Into the silence, he murmurs, emotion thickening his voice. “I think I'm in love with you, Natasha.”

And Natasha is pleased to remember that she doesn't hesitate to say it back. “I think... I am in love with you too.”

* * *

Hand in hand, the two agents sprint through the city together, racing against the ever-darkening sky. Steve leads Natasha out of the alleyway in which they had shared a kiss and into a nearby parking lot, where he scans the area, picks a blue Chevy truck sitting on the outskirts, and runs over to it. He looks around the two of them and the deserted parking lot to check it is clear, before making eye contact with Natasha, putting a finger to his lips, and turning back to the driver side of the car.

Natasha can’t see what he is doing, but when he pulls away after a couple minutes, he yanks the door of the car and it _opens_. Natasha struggles to contain her shock before pulling herself together and running around to jump into the passenger's seat of the car Steve just magically unlocked. With that, the two pull out of the parking lot and drive out onto open roads, heading towards where the flash drive had told them to go in New Jersey, after finally having admitted that their love each other.

About damn time. Took them long enough. 

Natasha’s body feels alive with the two kisses they had shared, and every part of her feels electric. She can’t relax. Her muscles are tense, her skin is warm and fuzzy, the feeling of his lips on hers, his hand on her waist, still hovering there. She feels hot and she can barely comprehend what has happened in the last few hours. It's all out. All in the open. 

_Steve loves her._

He said it. He really did. He said that he was in love with her. _And she had said it back._ That was what she really couldn’t comprehend. She had never told anyone she loved them. The words felt strange on her tongue, but at the same time completely and utterly right.

As the hours pass on their long car journey to New Jersey, Natasha props her feet up on the dashboard, her head lolling on the headrest, turning to face Steve. She watches him intensely, his calm features, eyes staring out onto the road. 

“Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?” she says quietly, playfully.

He turns to her as if waking from a daze, shaking his head almost imperceptibly and readjusting his position in the driver’s seat. 

“Nazi Germany.” 

“Mm.” she hums. _Obvious answer, how ever could she have not realised it!_

The conversation is about to settle into silence, but then Steve speaks up, a hint of a smirk playing on his face. “And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash.”

Natasha’s smile widens as she tries to tell if he is joking, but still slowly and deliberately removes her legs from the dashboard. 

“Alright, I have a question for you, oh, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know?” she rambles on. Steve rolls his eyes and answers insistently.

“What?” 

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?” she finally spills as soon as Steve asks, unable to refrain from smiling as she says it.

 _Which one?_ Is the first thought to cross Steve’s mind, but he doesn’t speak it. It doesn't matter which one. She is asking him whether there has been anyone else since Peggy. 

“That bad, huh?” 

“I didn't say that!” she teases him. Who’s she kidding, it was the best kiss of her life. No, she’s just winding him up. 

“Well, it kind of _sounds_ like that's what you're saying.”

“No, I didn't.” Natasha defends. “I just wondered how much practice you've had.”

“You don't need practice.”

“Everybody needs practice.”

“It was not my first kiss since 1945. I’m ninety-five, I’m not dead.” Steve says sternly, but Natasha knows he’s not seriously offended.

“Nobody special though?” she throws his way, as she turns to look out of the window..

“What, like you?” Steve lets the remark spill from his mouth without thinking, accidentally revealing just how far back his feelings for Natasha go.

Natasha opens her mouth to say something, but has nothing to say. 

_Nobody special?_

_She_ was his something special.

Just how long has he felt this way about her?

She stays silent, her eyes straying out front to the road escaping beneath them, her throat feeling rather tight all of a sudden. 

“Well, if we remove you from the equation, it’s kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience.”

“Well, that's alright, you just make something up.” Natasha supplies, grateful for the comment to break the silence. 

“Like you do, you mean?” 

“I don’t know… I don’t make it up with you.” she says, her words slurring slightly. “The truth... The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people, all the time. And neither am I.”

“Depends on who you ask. That though, that's a tough way to live.” Steve says concernedly.

“‘S a good way not to die though.” Natasha sighs dispiritedly. 

Steve realises with a wave of pity that that is how simply Natasha has always had to live. It doesn't matter what the value of her life is, just as long as it keeps her physically alive, and keeps her heart beating. She has never stopped long enough to think about what she wants as a person. Always a machine, working for the KGB, and then S.H.I.E.L.D. It makes him think where her loyalties lie outside of her work, and whether she would spin a web of lies just to get her goal. It makes him think whether he can really trust her at all, if this is the way she plays the game. 

“You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is.” he says.

Natasha’s eyebrows furrow. He knows who she is. Unless he doubts himself. Maybe this kiss is the perfect opportunity for a new beginning. Time to redefine their relationship. Who is she to Steve? Who is she to have become this ‘someone special’? This person, who means enough to him to follow her to the ends of the earth, without a single question of her character.

“Yeah.” she agrees with him, pausing for a moment to consider. “Who do you want me to be?” 

Steve waits a while before replying, the answer taking a while to form in his head. _Who does he want her to be?_ Any number of things cross his mind, but it’s not about any of that. It’s about what is right for _them_ , at this pivotal point in the crossroads. With so much deception going on around them, he needs someone not only to rely on and have his back, but to lead him in the parts where he is lost, to be with him, no matter the cost. Somehow, that doesn't seem all that different to what Natasha has been for him in the time he has known her. Except now this new feeling pulls him towards her like a magnet, needing to love her in the way she was never taught how. And then a conversation drifts into Steve's head, vague and blurry as it takes its time to form. Him and Peggy, sitting in a car on the way to the procedure that would change his life. He had told her that nothing really mattered then, not until he met _that_ person. He had told Peggy he figured he would just wait, and Peggy had asked him for what.  
Then the answer forms itself in his head without conscious decision.

“The right partner.” 

That is who he wants her to be. He had told Peggy he was waiting for the right partner, and now he truly believes, more than anything, that he has found it. Natasha is his right partner, the one he wants to stand with for the rest of his days. He doesn't want to live for a moment without her at his side, and he sincerely means it. 

Natasha is touched by his answer, and she looks with sincerity at Steve. He meets her gaze, and smiles a small smile. Just like the one he had given when they first met. 

“For love?” she asks, and he stays quiet, his answer just as obvious as if he had declared it. _Yes._ She chuckles faintly. “Well there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”

Steve knows what she means. Their job is the complete wrong business for that type of relationship. Which had been partly why he had opted with partner, instead of lover. Love has no place in a job like theirs, a life like theirs.

And yet, somehow, it thrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, okay. That was fun. They are officially… lovers, I guess. Or, ‘partners’, if you deign to quote Steve Rogers. I feel like partner is a good word to sum up their relationship both now and in the future. They are constantly at each other's side, through love or combat, and that is eventually what will carry them through, I think.  
> Did you enjoy this chapter? I sure did.  
> Just like last time, I wrote a lil paragraph about my choices for what i did in this chapter if you wanna read:  
> The conversation after Natasha asks ‘nobody special though?’ and Steve says yes, I decided to keep in, because I think it's very important in representing the core values of both them and their relationship. Shared life experience is a huge thing that brings these two together and is a reason why they find it hard to be this same way with anyone else, because no one knows them like each other does. Truth is also an important concept for them both now and in the future, as we will see in this story. Truth can make the difference between life and death, and Natasha has yet to discover this. It's also important to keep this conversion because it establishes the sense of trust that is built on further in the story as they are attacked in the bunker and Steve saves Natasha’s life. As a result I decided to keep this conversation even after I tweaked some of the dialogue. Hope you all liked what i did there, I certainly am not the first to make the ‘what, like you?’ connection ;)


	21. A One In a Million Chance Is Still a Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When writing these books and filling in or what goes on offscreen, there are so many plot holes you encounter in terms of logistics etc. Just off the top of my head, an example is in this chapter, when Steve gets out of the car and suddenly he’s holding his shield?? Like, what? When did he get that? The last time we saw him with it was when he escaped S.H.I.E.L.D!! Ages ago! Where has he been hiding it?? He hasn't had it on him in recent chapters and had no where to stash it!? Honestly it's funny how much stuff like this I come into contact with when writing.  
> Also I feel like there is this string of chapters and scenes from the movie from when Steve and Nat visit the mall to when they reach Sam’s house where it’s just ROMANOGERSROMANOGERSROMANOGERS and honestly i'm not complaining but they lowkey threw aside the plot for a second just for these two and i am loving it, i mean i am spewing chapters from all this content.

Train Wreck - James Arthur

LOCATION: CAMP LEHIGH, WHEATON, NJ, 39.3583° N, 74.4374° W  
DATE: 09/26/2014 (nearly at the end now i promise)

Night has almost completely fallen when Steve pulls up in the blue truck with Natasha, the sun setting rapidly behind the treeline. Natasha has the tracking device open and active in her hand, and it confirms that this run down camp is where the signal is coming from. 

The two get out of the haphazardly parked car, Steve gazing up in wonder at the gates of their destination with a mix of horror and complete bewilderment. Both of them approach the gates, Natasha confirming one last command on the small device before slipping it into her back pocket.

“This is it?” Steve asks.

They have reached the tall wired gates, on top of which sits a sign reading, _Camp Lehigh, U.S Army Restricted Area_.

“The file came from these coordinates.” Natasha supplies as an explanation. 

“So did _I_.” Steve murmurs as they both stare up at the sign, run down and worn from years of neglect.

Natasha looks round at Steve in mild surprise. He had told her in the past about his humble beginnings and the camp at which he had trained. And now they were here. This was it? 

Something absolutely is not right here.

For a while both Steve and Nat work on getting a good look around the camp, wandering the outskirts of the tall metal fence, making sure there are no obvious traps or security cameras. Once sure it is okay to enter, Steve ushers Natasha over to him, where he gives her a boost up with his hands to climb the fence, proceeding then to support her around the hips as she clambers over the tall gate and jumps down the other side. Natasha turns to watch Steve as he nimbly maneuvers himself over next, making sure he is uninjured as he lands the other side. Then, the two make their way into the depths of the camp, now eerily scary under the cover of complete darkness.

Steve is staring around the camp, eyes wide, as Natasha brings out the device again and starts locating the specifics of the signal’s whereabouts. They wander through the buildings together, the only sound being the quiet whistle of wind and rare tweets of straggling birds lost on their way home. 

“This camp is where I was trained.” he confirms to Natsha, even though she already knows. 

“Change much?” she asks, eyes still on the device she holds above her head in an attempt to attract a signal.

“A little.” he says quietly, slowing to a stop in front of a flagpole he recognises all too well. Natasha carries on, leaving Steve alone in this chapter of his past. He can see himself, short and skinny, the gear and uniform dwarfing his small frame as he lags behind the rest of the group, which race ahead of him. The patrol officer, yelling at him to speed up. His heart pounds with raw emotion at this memory and everything that has happened since. Such simpler times. A lump rises in his throat as he watches his past self run away, desperately try to catch up with his troop. So much of it he wishes was the same, but he knows it is also impossible. Last time he was here, he was a shadow of the person he is now. Still, it was a welcome shadow, and a simpler one, which he craves now.

“This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off.” Natasha speaks up from a raised platform behind Steve, rousing him from his daze. He turns to see her, but is distracted by something else instead.

A large, bulky brick building squats in the dirt a while back behind Natasha. Steve could recognise a building like that anywhere, but he sure as hell knows that it should not be _here_.

“What is it?” Natasha asks, seeing the familiar look on Steve’s face, of trepidation, and a little fear. 

He jogs towards her, up the small set of stairs onto the platform on which she stands, taking her hand in his instinctively and pulling her down more stairs the other side, onto the dry, muddy ground, and starts towards the building. He lets go of Natasha’s hand as he speeds up towards it. This. He has found it.

“Army regulations forbids storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place.” he provides an explanation to Natasha, who has been following him blindly, unclear of his reasoning. 

When they reach the door, Steve takes a swing back and hits the lock with his shield, which instantly cracks and falls to the floor. Together, with caution, they both enter this deadly quiet building. They are instantly met with a small staircase, which they descend and step into what seems to be a large open room. It is difficult to see due to the lack of light, but Steve can sense the room is large and lofty, due to the gentle air sweeping towards him in great waves. 

Natasha has found a lightswitch on a nearby wall, and when she pushes it, bars of overhead lights flicker to life, illuminating this eerie place, which Steve was right to estimate the size of. It stretches out into dark corners that even the light can't reach, causing the light to abandon its mission and center onto the middle of this large bunker instead. 

What the light can illuminate shows them rows and rows of desks, ancient foreign technology and tiny screened computers, all coated in thick layers of dust. At the end of the room sits a humongous circular emblem, printed on the wall. Steve could recognise it anywhere. It’s S.H.I.E.L.D’s familiar bird, wings fanning out to touch the edges of the circle.

“This is S.H.I.E.L.D.” Natasha confirms what Steve has been thinking.

The two begin to amble slowly down the center walkway between the rows of desks, taking in the weak flickering of the yellowing lamps, the dust that poofs from under their feet as they walk. This place hasn't been touched in years.

“Maybe where it started.” Steve adds, registering how ancient the technology is. This is from _his_ time, when he trained as a soldier here. 

A door off the side leads them into a room lined with what would have been bookcases, except they hold nothing, bare except for the dust. The light gets dimmer in this room, the lamps overhead struggling to uphold the constant flow of power needed. On the wall immediately opposite them sits a row of haphazardly hung, framed, black and white portraits. Natasha joins Steve at his side to look at them.

“There’s Stark’s father.” Natasha points out, gesturing to the portrait in the middle, where a young, dark haired man looks intensely back at them. However, Steve's gaze falls to the portrait immediately to the right.

It’s Peggy, young in her former glory. Steve doesn't need colour in the print to know the dark red lipstick she wears, clear as day. His conversation with older Peggy in her nursing home echoes in his head. 

_Sometimes the best we can do, is to start over._

It hurts him that he will never again see this Peggy, the one here, in all her youthful, powerful glory. But what she said that day still rings true to Steve, and it is what makes him reach out to grasp Natasha’s hand, a lump rising in his throat. 

She looks up at him concernedly, and when she sees the tears in his eyes, she squeezes his hand tight, comfortingly. Steve smiles down at her in response to the gesture, and together, they move on.

Further into the room, the bookcases fill up gradually with more and more cobwebs, but that is not what Steve notices. A certain bookshelf on his left seems to hum, and what seems like the whistle of _wind_ hisses through a crack between two separate cases. Suspicion successfully aroused, he nears it, breaking away from Natasha to inspect it closely. The humming grows louder, and it comes from what seems to be _behind the bookcases themselves_.  
Something is obviously there which shouldn't be.

“If you're already working in a secret office…” he thinks aloud, fitting his fingers between the gap and heaving it open a portion. It separates a little, enabling Steve to just fit his body between the gap and use his core strength combined with his muscles to wrench the rest of the bookcase doors apart. When it opens, it shows them a short corridor that ends in a set of sliding double doors, obviously the opening to an elevator.  
“Why do you need to hide the elevator?” Steve finishes.

Together, Steve and Nat they enter the elevator, Natasha bringing out her device which encrypts the passcode to enable them to use it. They descend in the dark, the elevator taking them ways below ground level. The heavy feeling of earth pressing above them makes Natasha feel trapped, claustrophobic. She hates being underground. 

When the elevator doors open, they are once again greeted with pitch blackness. It is a fathomless empty void, to which there is no end, and for a moment Steve and Natasha do nothing but stare into it, confusion, hesitation and anticipation wracking them. 

As if deciding unanimously and also completely silently, they slowly begin to enter the void together. Their bodies are engulfed by the darkness, their shadows disappearing and almost completely vanishing, selves becoming at one with the oblivion.

The further they venture into the darkness, the lighter it becomes, until they reach a point in this bottomless cavern where the lights on the ceiling begin to flicker of their own volition, shedding a little light to the situation before them. Similar to the room before them, ancient looking devices line the walls and form long winding rows in the middle, all leading up to a raised platform in the center, where a group of grey, dusty computers collect to form some kind of gigantic work desk. One lone chair sits beneath and in front of these great opaque screens, disturbingly isolated in the swarm of screens, cameras and devices.

Steve and Natasha mount the platform, looking around in disbelief. 

“This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient.” Natasha says, approaching the huge desk and surveying it critically. Suddenly, she notices a small black device sitting in the foreground of the desk. A black flash drive port, fit for a good few drives. It lacks the thick coat of dust that every other surface possesses, proving it’s alienness in the throng of beige and white devices. Blue lights blink harshly at Natasha and the ironic smile that she had previously donned falls from her face. She takes out the flashdrive from her pocket and, Steve watching attentively behind her, plugs it into the port.

The reaction is instantaneous. All around them, every ancient device in the entire floor of the underground bunker springs to life, wheels turning, engines humming, lights turning on. It opens up a whole other sector of devices surrounding them, and the bunker seems to go on for miles into the darkness, machines taking up every single square inch. Both Natasha and Steve whirl to observe the sudden onslaught of activity, watching as everything around them comes to life at the simple act of plugging in this drive. What is clearly a security camera that perches high on the desk tilts excruciatingly slowly up to face them. 

On the desk, the largest screen’s opaque display becomes black, and neon green text clicks it’s way disturbingly across the screen. It speaks the words it types in a robotic tongue.

“ _Initiate system?_ ”

Natasha moves forward to the keyword, a playful glint in her eye. She speaks as she types the confirmation.

“Y-E-S, spells yes.”

As she presses the enter key, a grin sneaks its way across her face. She says in a deep voice,

“Shall we play a game?”, turning back to Steve to explain the joke, “It’s from a movie that…” but Steve interrupts her.

“Yeah, I saw it.'' His face is impassive, but inside he fights the urge to laugh, and his heart warms at her playfulness, something which isn't rarely seen in this woman he loves. 

She tuts lightly and they both turn to watch the main screen which the text had appeared on flicker and form an image. The image takes the rough, green, blurry shape of a disconcertingly familiar face, with dark pits for eyes and a scratchy, off-putting voice. 

“Rogers, Steven.” it sputters as the face struggles to maintain its blotchy shape. Steve’s eyes widen at the instant knowledge of his name. This machine is far more intelligent than they have realised. “Born 1918.”

The camera above the desk turns sluggishly to face Natasha.  
“Romanov, Natalia Alianovna. Born 1984.” 

Natasha’s head whips around at the sound of _her_ name also coming out of this deranged machine. She refuses to believe it.

“It’s.. some kind of recording.” she presumes, because there is no way it is actively seeing and listening to them.

“I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am.” the computer responds.

Steve’s heart jumps in his chest as a screen to the side shows a picture of the very man Steve feared so much all those years ago. A man he had thought was on his side. Dr Arnim Zola.

“You know this thing?” Natasha asks Steve.

Steve doesn't answer for a moment, descending down from the platform and making his way around to the back of the desk, confusion still stopping him from comprehending. “Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years.”

“First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. _I have never been more alive._ In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks.” Zola, or the machine explains, as Steve makes his way back round to Natasha on the platform. “You are standing in my brain.”

“How did you get here?” Steve inquires.

“Invited.” 

Natasha speaks up, looking to Steve as she talks. “It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. S.H.I.E.L.D recruited German scientists with... strategic value.” 

“They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.”

“HYDRA died with the Red Skull.” Steve defends.

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.” the robot voice says maliciously, the symbol for HYDRA flashing on the screen before morphing into two identical faces of Zola in front of them.

Doubt, dread, fills Steve. “Prove it.”

For a moment, screens around the larger one in the center flicker to life, whirring and buzzing as the age old machines inside them power up.

“Accessing archive.” 

The computer appears with old black and white strings of various pieces of footage. Of the Red Skull, the original S.H.I.E.L.D founders, soldiers in the war, of Steve himself in his old Captain America suit, yelling inaudibly at troops. The computer narrates the scene unfolding before Steve and Nat.  
“HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.”

The horror on both Steve and Natasha’s face gets more intense, if possible. 

“That's impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D would have stopped you.” Natasha murmurs in consternation.

“Accidents happen.” 

On the screen, newspaper prints of Howard and Maria Stark’s death in a car accident along with data from various death certificates, including Nick Fury’s, with a scarlet stamp across the middle declaring him _DECEASED_.

“HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise.” On the screen, footage of the carriers in the basement of the Triskelion, Project Insight, glares across the screen. “We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life; a zero sum.”

The anger that had been steadily rising in Steve at the revelation of this deception lets itself out of him in a fist that plunges its way into the screen and the haunting face of Arnim Zola. The glass smashes on impact and pain flares out across Steve’s knuckles, but he ignores it. 

Zola’s face, however, just appears on a screen adjacent to the destroyed one, its voice dripping with sarcasm. “As I was saying…”

“What’s on this drive?” Steve demands of the machine, betrayal stewing red hot inside him and fueling his rage.

“Project Insight requires... insight. So I wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind of algorithm? What does it do?” Natasha snaps at the machine. Something isn't right about this, but she can’t pin what it is.

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be _too dead to hear it._ ” the machine says evilly.

Alarm flares in both Steve and Natasha, just as a loud, drawn-out shriek of what sounds like a siren sounds behind them. They both spin to see the doors to the elevator closing, and fast. In desperation Steve flings his shield in the direction of them, hoping to jam it, but the doors close too soon, and the shield comes flying right back having done nothing whatsoever. Natasha brings out her device which has been beeping incessantly in her pocket and panic begins to cloud her thoughts when she reads what is on the screen. 

This was a trap. 

“Steve, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic... 30 seconds tops!”

“Who fired it?” Steve cries.

Natasha looks up in terror to meet Steve's eyes.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Behind them, the machine speaks up malevolently. 

“I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain.” 

The machine might as well be cackling evilly. Its intentions are as much. Natasha reaches around to grab the device from its port just as Steve looks frantically for somewhere to hide or protect him and Nat from the oncoming blast.

“Admit it, it's better this way.” the machine hisses.

Steve sees a metal grate on the floor near the door they entered through and runs to remove it. Below is a sizable pit, perfect for two people. As he turns again, the high-pitched scream of the missile grows louder, nearing closer and closer to the building in which they preside. Natasha runs to Steve as fast as she can and he envelopes her in his arms as they both jump into the pit. Just in time, as the entire building explodes in flames.

“We are both of us...out of time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dunnnnn! Cliffhanger! I do love a good cliffhanger.  
> The next chapter after this is gonna be so full of romanogers it's ridiculous, I can't wait.. Steve is literally a knight in shining armour.  
> Hope you enjoyed it!


	22. I Won't Sleep Until You're Safe Inside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happens in this chapter. It has angst, it has fluff, it has humour, and it even has a little bit of steaminess too (pun intended). All round goodie in my opinion.  
> Also today I watched both Infinity War and Endgame today and cried a lot but we fine iss good

Safe Inside - James Arthur

LOCATION(S): CAMP LEHIGH, WHEATON, NJ, 39.3583° N, 74.4374° W, WASHINGTON DC, 39.1774° N, 76.6684° W  
DATE: 09/27/2014

Hot flames burn and lick at the bodies of the agents huddled in the hole in the ground, but the strong heat is nothing compared to the force of the constant downfall of debris that cascades down around them. The floor trembles as gargantuan pillars of concrete collapse onto the ground, sending sprays of dust and debris everywhere. In the hole a few feet below ground level, Steve holds his shield up for dear life over the heads of both him and Natasha, who he clutches against his chest. With horror, as they struggle to hold against the avalanche, he realises that they may not make it out of here alive.

The steady rain of concrete, metal pipes and bricks continues to hammer down upon them, and the blows Steve takes to the shield above his head are so powerful that they almost make him drop it.

The downfall seems, if possible, to get heavier, raining down on them in an assault incomparable to anything Steve has experienced. Multiple floors worth of destruction is collapsing down upon them, and it will not stop. It is getting out of control, and fear spikes higher in Steve.

Although the shield blocks most of the falling debris, it cannot protect from all of it, and bricks and rubble still land with heavy thuds on Steve's ankles, Natasha's legs. Furthermore, as much as he tries to hold her close, Natasha keeps slipping away, and as the smoke begins to enter his lungs, rendering him dizzy and his vision blurry, he can suddenly no longer see or feel her. He cries out in alarm and fear, anger and dismay.

But what he doesn't see or hear, is Natasha’s scream, and the brick that hits her head and silences her, immediately.

* * *

It seems like days later when Steve opens his eyes tentatively, to be greeted with stillness and silence, when really it has been mere minutes. The onslaught has finally stopped. All the floors have fallen. And he is alive. 

At this thought, panic immediately registers. What about Natasha? He had lost her in the explosion. He needs to find her. With a grunt, he attempts to dislodge a large slab of concrete that is pinning him down. It takes all his strength, but finally he manages to push it forward and away from him, where it falls down again and sends a cloud of smoke into the air he breathes. His lungs ache and burn from the smoke and spots on his legs and arms throb from the impact of most probably numerous amounts of fallen debris. 

The air is heavy, and hot, and dense, and Steve pants into it as he looks desperately around for Natasha. Then he sees her, unconscious, collapsed against a mound of debris. Her eyes are closed, head lolling, and there are no words to describe the horrifying jolt Steve’s heart makes at the sight.

 _Please don't be dead, please don't be dead, please don't be dead,_ he chants as he wades his way towards her through small mountains of rubble. 

But when he presses his fingers to the inside of her wrist and holds them there, he is relieved to feel the faint pulse of a heart, still miraculously beating. Confident that she will stay alive, at least for now, Steve turns and attempts to get his bearings on where they are, and how to escape, if possible.

Coughing and wheezing into the smoke filled air, he pokes his head over the top of the hole they had jumped into at the explosion. The building has, of course, been completely demolished, and Steve now looks out onto open night sky.

Luckily, there is a relatively clear path of exit through the piles of rubble, and he turns urgently back to Natasha. It's time to get the hell out of here.

Carefully, as cautiously as he can, he slips his arms around her and brings her up and against him. Grunting in the exertion, he carries her against his chest, along with his shield, up and out of the pit.

When he emerges, the night sky is lit up by the orange flames that burn and flicker around them. The air is cleaner up here, yes, but the damage to his lungs (and probably Nat's too) is far beyond done now. His serum has probably protected him from the worst of it, but he hates to think how much Natasha has suffered, and the state she will be in when she wakes.  
_If she wakes,_ a small voice in his head echoes, but he can't let himself think of that possibility. It cannot happen. He cannot let it.

He pauses and looks up to the sky in desperation as Natasha lies against him, fear and hopelessness filling him. He feels more scared now, than he ever has been before. 

As if to taunt that thought, the sky is suddenly filled with a swarm of what looks like S.H.I.E.L.D quintjets, soaring towards the wreckage of the building in the distance, lights flaring on the ships. Have they come to check that they're dead, or finish them off?

Steve doesn't stick around long enough to find out.

He breaks into a sprint as the men jump down from the ships and spread out across the rubble of the burning building, gasping for air and tightening his arms around Natasha, unconscious in his arms.

His head is a mess, a jumble of thoughts rocketing around his brain and refusing to order themselves. He doesn't know where to go or how to get out of here. All he knows is that he has to get as far away as possible from this place. And so he does. He runs.

Natasha’s body is warm in his arms, and he looks down at her fearfully as he runs. Aside from the chalky dust and smoke coating her face, her eyes are closed, and her mouth lies open. If Steve strains, he can just hear the wheeze of air as she inhales and exhales. She is struggling to breathe too. He tries not to think about how much smoke she may have inhaled.

He barely notices he has reached the edge of the compound until he sees the faint blue shadow of the car they had arrived in, untouched by the destruction ways behind them. He evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of using this as a getaway vehicle, but decides to use it anyway. There is no way he can keep going carrying Natasha like this for long. Super soldier he is, but mortal man he is also.

As he cradles Natasha against his chest, he yanks the car door open and lays her carefully down in the passenger seat, maneuvering her into a rough sitting position and taking precious time just to make sure her seatbelt is on, and that she is safe. Then he proceeds to run round to the other side of the car and jump into the driver's seat, chuck his shield into the back, switch gear to reverse, and slam his foot on the accelerator so hard he is surprised the car doesn't just break.

The growl of the car’s engine isn't heard over the shouts of men and purr of ship engines in the distance, and Steve and Nat manage to escape in the car, just as Rumlow discovers that they are, in fact, alive.

The car is safe under the cover of darkness, for now, as Steve drives through the roads, going at sixty or seventy miles per hour down these winding lonely roads. The drive gives him the opportunity to think, and work out where on earth they can go.

S.H.I.E.L.D has fallen. That much he knows. He doubts any of it was ever even true in the first place. S.H.I.E.L.D was always HYDRA, HYDRA always S.H.I.E.L.D. The analogy that Zola's brain in the machine had used echoes in his head.

_A beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D._

He had been secretly working for HYDRA and hadn't even realised. But then, so had Natasha. He knows how much that will affect her. She thought she had changed for the better by joining S.H.I.E.L.D, it was the whole point, but it turns out she hadn’t changed at all. His heart goes out to her. 

Suddenly, he knows just where to go.

By the time he reaches the outskirts of Washington DC again, the dawn has begun and Steve can see hints of the sun blinking behind the tree line. Anxiety squeezes at his heart and he looks round to Natasha, still unconscious on the seat beside him. She hasn't been awake for hours now, and he is getting worried.

When he pulls the car over on the edge of a small forest that leads them into central DC, he gets out of the car and runs round to Natasha's side. They can no longer use this car to travel through DC - it will be too conspicuous - but at the same time, he won't exactly look normal carrying Natasha bridal style through the streets of DC. What other choice does he have through? If he takes the car straight there, it is practically inviting S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA whatever it is now, to come and get them. Steve will just have to hope that it is too early in the morning for people to be up and about. He reaches over to undo the seatbelt across Natasha and carefully takes her back into his arms, grabbing the shield from the back before abandoning the car. 

As Steve approaches the center of DC, he sticks to narrow alleyways down the side of buildings, and through shabby gardens full of junk, to where he knows Sam Wilson lives. Sam feels like the only person he can turn to at this point, and he prays that he can be trusted. Otherwise, this is the end for them.

Just as he turns down another alleyway, Natasha stirs in his arms. He looks down in surprise and immense relief to see her, eyes open and shifting in his arms. Steve stops dead in his tracks.

"Nat! Oh thank God, you're awake." he murmurs.

Natasha protests in his arms, pushing away from him and clearly demanding to be put down.

Steve obeys, dropping her legs to the ground and letting her stand for herself.

However,Natasha fails, falling to the ground, but it is soon clear she did this deliberately. On all fours, she retches, vomiting onto the cracked pavement beneath her. 

Shocked but instinctively kneeling down to help her, Steve gathers her hair in his hand and rubs her back as she continues to heave over the ground. She must have inhaled a whole lot of smoke. Steve knows he did too, but unlike him, Natasha doesn't have super soldier serum to protect her from the damage caused.

Once she has finished, Natasha groans, and attempts to get to her feet, but is clearly still unsteady. Steve takes her by the shoulders to stop her falling over, and turns her to face him.

“Hey, look at me. We’re back in DC now. It’s morning. I know a guy we can stay with. Are you okay to walk?” he asks her, searching her bleary eyes for some hint of the Natasha he knows.

She doesn’t answer for a moment, clearly trying to get her bearings, then nods.

Together, Steve still holding onto Natasha with a hand, the two make their way towards Sam’s house. Steve leads the way. When they arrive, the sun has fully risen over the treetops, casting light on their faces covered in soot and grime, disheveled looking and exhausted.

The memories of the explosion, the collapsing of the building, all come back to Natasha as they walk, and by the time they have arrived, she remembers every horrifying moment. Her head injury can't be too severe then. She does have one hell of a headache and hella sore lungs though.

Steve knocks on the door of Sam’s house, glancing across at Natasha to check she isn’t about to pass out again or anything, but she seems fine. The blinds flutter open and they are greeted with Sam’s surprised and slightly sweaty face. He must have just returned from a run. Sam slides open the door, still looking at Steve in disbelief, taking in both of their shabby appearances.

“Hey man.” he greets Steve.

“I’m sorry about this. We need a place to lay low.” Steve implores, looking desperately up at him.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us.” Natasha croaks from beside Steve. Both of them keep glancing around them, their initial sense of trust crushed, with the exception of each other.

Sam looks sympathetically down at them both. “Not everyone.” he says, and he steps aside to let them pass and enter the house.

Sam leads them to a spare room upstairs, with a functioning shower and bathroom, and leaves them to clean up. Steve helps Natasha, still a little disoriented, get into the shower, before leaving to the bedroom, and finding a seat on the bed. Even if him and Nat are in some kind of tentative relationship, the conservativeness is ingrained so deep inside him he would feel embarrassed to stay in the same room as her when she is showering. It's a habit. It’s also just polite. He isn't going to assume he has a right to everything about her just because… well, just because they're in love.

Sleep calls to Steve as he waits, begging him to place his head down on this pillow to his left, pleading to let him just fall unconscious. Sleep, he will have time for later. For now, he needs to make sure they are safe here, and okay. He had been so worried that Natasha was seriously injured, that they would need to go to hospital, that S.H.I.E.L.D would catch them, that they would die anyway. But thankfully, she seems to only have a mild concussion, maybe some damage from smoke inhalation. All round, lucky. They should have died in that pit, and yet they made it here, relatively unscathed. And for that, Steve is grateful.

When Natasha returns from the shower in a black tank top and jeans, Steve gets up and offers her his seat on the bed. Steve then takes his turn in the bathroom, stripping down to the white (but now grey) tank top he wears underneath his clothes, and washing his hands in the large sink. The water is cool and refreshingly clean, and Steve can't wait to be rid of the horrible dust and grime coating his hands and sticking in his nails. He hates being dirty.

When he finishes and looks up at the mirror above the sink, he sees Natasha in the room behind him, patting her red hair down with a towel and gazing at, nothing in particular. She has spaced out, mouth turned down in a frown, and she looks upset. Thinking.

Steve grabs a towel from a hook on the wall and turns from the mirror to stand in the doorway, looking at her. When she senses him, she looks up too.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.” she answers instinctively, but she doesn’t properly meet his eyes. Steve knows her better than that. He knows she is lying. Knowingly, he slings the towel in his hands back into the bathroom, and sits in a chair opposite the bed, Natasha’s eyes on him as he goes.

He leans forward in his seat, meeting her eyes with an intensity often coupled with trying to work out what is going on inside her head.

“What’s going on?” he says calmly, the question a familiar refuge for Natasha to let go of her troubles.

She looks at him for a moment, her green eyes boring into his blue ones. This display of how much Steve knows her, and cares for her, is just another reminder why she loves him the way she does. Part of her longs to reach out and just touch him, but she holds back.

“When I first joined S.H.I.E.L.D, I thought I was going straight.” she pauses, looking away. “But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA... I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but...I guess I can't tell the difference anymore.”

Natasha returns her head back up to meet Steve’s gaze, an ironic smile flashing briefly across her face. This was exactly what Steve had worried about her thinking in the car on the way here. He knew this would be what would bother Natasha the most. She thought she had got onto the right path joining S.H.I.E.L.D, but now it turns out they were no better.

His mind goes back to the conversation they had in the car almost a day ago. Their job isn’t the right one for ‘going straight’ for being what you want to be, that there will always be one thing wrong after the next, and the next.

“There’s a chance you might be in the wrong business.” Steve smiles softly, repeating her words back to her. Their eyes never leave each other.

Natasha laughs softly, and her hand reaches out of its own volition to brush Steve’s, hanging in the air between them as his arms rest on his knees. His fingers respond to the touch, gently taking hold of her hand in his, and squeezing it comfortingly. The gesture already feels familiar. Just touch, for the sake of touch. A kind of connection that can't be matched just through gazes.

Natasha’s eyes move from their entwined fingers back up to Steve’s eyes. “I owe you.” she murmurs, emotion making her throat tight. He had saved her, without thought or consideration. He had just done it. Instinctively.

Steve shakes his head as soon as she says it, disregarding it completely. It wasn't a choice. He had to save her. There was no possibility for any other outcome in his mind. “It’s okay.” 

“...If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life, and now you be honest with me... would you trust me to do it?” Natasha says quietly, not breaking eye contact with Steve while he answers.

Steve nods simply. “I would now.” 

Natasha’s eyes widen slightly in mild surprise at his answer, and her heart feels like it is exploding. She just had to hear him say it. He trusts her with his life. Her feelings are not unrequited, not in the slightest. Natasha’s fingers tighten around his hand, trying to communicate all the words she could never have the courage to say. But Steve understands just fine.

For him, two years ago, when they had fought the Chitauri, he had been forced to trust her on a teammate, need-to-know basis, to trust that they both had the same aim, and that was it. Similar goals required teaming up in order to achieve them. But in the years since, and everything that has happened, a different sort of trust has been established - a trust in the other person, as they are, in their morals and actions, and trusting that person to do what they can with your best interests at heart. And Steve knows he has always trusted her, it’s just that before that, the trust was a little different. Business related only, one could say.

“And I'm always honest.” he says, a humorous follow up to her question.

Natasha smiles, rolling her eyes slightly. Unnoticed by either of them, they have gradually inched closer to each other as they spoke, and their faces now hover mere inches apart. Natasha is taken back in time to the hospital room, and how close they had been to just giving in and kissing. Now there is nothing to stop them.

She leans in, eyes on Steve’s lips, and murmurs seductively, “Well, you seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing.”

Steve reciprocates her intense gaze on his lips, eyes travelling over every inch of her face. They are so close he can feel her breath, warm on his face.

“Well,” he hums, slowly moving his face to the side of her head, where he whispers the rest of his sentence in her ear. “I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting.”

He returns his head to face hers, noses almost touching. All it would take is one move forward, less than an inch, and their lips would be connected.

All of a sudden there comes a voice from the door. “I just th- oh. Woah, I’m sorry.” Sam backs away, but he has already entered and seen them together. 

They both immediately spring apart, Steve leaning back in his chair, as far away as possible, Natasha looking away awkwardly.

Sam continues, embarrassed. “I made breakfast. If you guys...eat that sort of thing.” he says, before leaving the room as fast as possible.

Steve and Nat make eye contact, and then struggle not to burst out laughing. Steve stands and holds out his hand for Natasha to help get up. She takes it and looks around the room.

“Do you think he has straighteners? For my hair?” she wonders aloud, smirking.

“Natasha...” Steve says incredulously, shaking his head. Then seems to remember something. “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. When did you decide to start _straightening your hair_? It wasn’t like that before… well, before the Lemerian Star!”

Natasha shakes her head disappointedly at Steve.. “Steve, you really are unobservant. It’s been like this for _ages_. What, you don’t like it?” she asks as they go around the room, tidying after themselves.

“It looks good, but I do sometimes miss the curls.” Steve smiles coyly. Natasha sighs, swats Steve around the head and he exits the room at a jog before she can hit him any more.

* * *

When Natasha has fully prepared for the day ahead, making sure everything is in order, she goes to join Steve in the kitchen, where he is in the middle of making his way through a large stack of waffles at the kitchen table. As she passes him, she nabs one off his plate and munches into it, before choosing to lean against the countertop and observe Steve and Sam’s conversation. They are discussing the attack launched on Steve and Nat in the underground HYDRA base. Natasha still feels nauseous thinking about it, the feeling of the smoke filling and clogging her lungs not quite erased from her memory yet.  
S.H.I.E.L.D had launched it, but who exactly had passed the order? Who is in charge of this secret infiltration?

“So, the question is: who in S.H.I.E.L.D could launch a domestic missile strike?” Natasha joins in the conversation, and both sets of eyes turn to her.

Steve suddenly looks up as it dawns on him. “Pierce.”

“Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world.” Natasha agrees, instinctively moving from her position on the counter closer to where Steve sits.

“But he's not working alone, Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star.” Steve counters, brow furrowed in concentration. It is Natasha who realises, however.

“So was Jasper Sitwell.” 

Steve inhales sharply. “So, the _real_ question is: how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a S.H.I.E.L.D officer in broad daylight?”

Sam appears from the other end of the kitchen, a file in hand. He chucks it down onto the table in front of Nat and Steve. “The answer is: you don’t.”

“What’s this?” Steve asks, leaning forward.

“Call it a resume.” Sam replies.

Steve gets to his feet and opens the file, Natasha joining him. She selects a photo from the midst of paper sheets and holds it up to see clearer.

“Is this Bakhmala? The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you?” Natasha phrases it like a question, but already knows the answer. She turns back to Steve accusingly. “You didn’t say he was a pararescue.” 

Steve takes the photo from Natasha, which shows two men geared head to toe in equipment. “Is this Riley?” Steve gestures to the man next to Sam. 

“Yeah.” 

“I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?” Natasha directs at Sam. He shakes his head.

“No.” he leans forward to the file and withdraws another binder inside of it, which he hands to Steve. “These.”

Steve looks down in surprise at the file, a classified military project named Falcon. Inside lies detailed designs and prototype photos of what looks to be, at first, a set of average wings, but when examined closer, are made of metal, consisting of machinery advanced well beyond its years. 

“Thought you said you were a pilot.” Steve says dryly to Sam, who chuckles.

“I never said pilot.”

Steve is silent for a moment, examining the file, before looking back up at Sam. “I can't ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason.”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There’s no better reason to get back in.”

Steve nods admiringly, waving the file in his hands and inhaling. “Where can we get our hands on one of these things?”  
“The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall.” Sam says grimly, but Steve and Natasha exchange matter-of-fact glances. Natasha shrugs her shoulders, ambivalent. Not a hard day’s work.

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Steve smiles, dropping the file back onto the table between them.

Together, the two that became three prepare to acquire Sam Wilson’s famous set of wings, before tracking down Jasper Sitwell to find out just how deep this chain of betrayal runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooo, long chapterrr! Okay, let's break it down.  
> 1\. Natasha got hit on the head with a brick! I was talking to my best friend about it and we couldn't stop laughing because they said that Natasha went bõnk. It should not have been that funny.  
> 2\. That scene in the bedroom of Sam’s house was… phew! *wipes sweat from brow* A little bit steamy! Especially after the shower Nat had just taken! That was the pun from the beginning notes, by the way.  
> 3\. Nat will be okay by the way, she just inhaled some smoke. Not too bad, but a pretty horrible experience still. Could have been a lot worse.  
> 4\. Also Steve carrying Nat out of the wreckage of the building? Soulmate behaviour if you ask me.  
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	23. Should We Go Ahead or Should We Turn Around?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Just feel like I should let people know that I won't be able to upload any chapters for a while until like the beginning of August, but don’t think i’m abandoning this fic, because i am far from it!  
> Anyways for the moment here is this long ass chapter full of fighting :)  
> 2\. Also this chapter added an ENTIRE 5500 words to my word count, the longest chapter yet, and THAT is on having to describe 30 minute long fight scenes.
> 
> Enjoy!

Boomerang - Imagine Dragons

LOCATION(S): WASHINGTON DC, 38.9072° N, 77.0369° W, TRISKELION BRIDGE 38.8923° N, 77.0598° W

DATE: 09/27/2014

BAM!

This is the noise Jasper Sitwell makes when Steve throws him through the door.

As he scrambles to his feet on the roof of this random building in downtown DC, Steve marches towards him intimidatingly, Natasha not far behind, not hesitating to begin his interrogation. 

“Tell me about Zola's algorithm.”

“Never heard of it.” 

“What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?”

“I was throwing up, I get seasick.”

By this time, Steve has pursued Sitwell right to the edge of the roof, where his legs bump into it and he wobbles dangerously, his face a perfect picture of fear. Steve yanks him back over to the roof by his shirt, bringing him right up to his face and glaring into his eyes menacingly.

Through Sitwell’s cool facade, Steve can see the secret fear and insecurity behind his eyes as he sneers, “Is this little display meant to insinuate that you're gonna throw me off the roof? Because it's really not your style, Rogers.”

Steve heart sings with pleasure at what he knows he is about to experience. “You’re right. It’s not,” he says, releasing Sitwell and patting his arms in a falsely reassuring way. Then he drops the bomb. “It’s hers.”

From behind him, Natasha looks appreciatively up at Steve as he steps aside. Then, in one swift movement, she lifts her leg and smacks Sitwell straight in the chest, sending him over the edge of the roof and into the streets below before he even has a chance to scream. He does scream eventually though, and boy is it loud. Natasha moves back to stand next to Steve, a genius idea coming to mind.

“Oh, wait. What about that girl from accounting, Laura…?” she says, a throwback to when she had attempted to set Steve up with a date in order to hide her feelings all the way back before the Lemurian Star. The lengths they have come since then warms hers somewhere deep inside she hadn’t realised existed. 

“Lillian. Lip piercing, right?” Steve says back, a grin on his face as he joins in.

“Yeah, she’s cute!” Nat encourages.

“Yeah, I’m not ready for that.” he says matter-of-factly, but then he looks at her and he can't help it and breaks, a smile erupting across his face. They both start laughing, and Steve reaches over to jab Natasha in the ribs where he knows is her weak spot. She writhes and wriggles away from him, keeping him at bay with occasional slaps from her hand as she giggles, but when they both hear Sitwell’s screaming getting closer and louder, they both simultaneously straighten up and plaster serious expressions on their faces, not wanting to be mistaken for the two very badass agents that they clearly are.

Sam Wilson, magnificent in his Falcon wings, comes soaring over the edge of the rooftop, Sitwell hanging from his fist. He drops him unceremoniously a little way behind Steve and Nat, going even further back to land gracefully on the roof. 

Steve and Nat both begin to stride towards Sitwell again, this time for real. They mean business, and Sitwell can tell.

As they reach him, he holds up a hand in self-defense, cowering on the ground like a pathetic little creature. 

“Zola's algorithm is a program...for choosing Insight's targets!”

“What targets?” Steve demands.

“You! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to HYDRA!”

Natasha looks in alarm at Steve. 

“Now, or in the future.” Sitwell continues, his voice high-pitched with fear.

“The future? How could it know?” Steve says.

Sitwell laughs manically.

“How could it not?” Sitwell seems confident that he has enough of Steve, Nat and Sam’s attention to get to his feet safely without being thrown off the roof again, so he does so, meeting Steve’s intense gaze as he speaks. “The 21st century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it.”

Evidently still confused, Steve and Nat just stare back at him cluelessly. Sitwell reluctantly expands.

“Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past, to predict their future.”

“And what then?” 

Sitwell seems to realise just how much he has divulged, and looks away in horror. “Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me.”

“ _What then_?” Steve insists, getting closer to Sitwell again. Sam grasps him from behind, just in case he tries to make any last getaway. Everybody’s eyes are on Sitwell, urgently waiting for the answer.

Even though they all already know it. 

“Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.”

* * *

Even bundled in the car with the others on the way to the Triskelion in an attempt to stop the attack, Sitwell does not shut up for one second, and if he is not silenced in the next minute, Natasha will personally take it upon herself to finish the job. 

“...HYDRA doesn't like leaks.”

From the driver’s seat, Sam hisses. “So why don't you try sticking a cork in it?”

Natasha leans round from the back seat to the passenger seat where Steve seats, directing her comment at him, “Insight's launching in sixteen hours, we're cutting it a little bit close here.”

“I know. We'll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the Helicarriers directly.” Steve explains as Natasha sits back again.

“ _What?_ Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible ide-”

From out of nowhere, a colossal thud on the car roof makes everyone look up. Then, a lot happens, within a very short amount of time. 

First, a metal arm reaches through the window next to Sitwell and grabs him by the neck, lifting him up and out of the car and throwing him in front of a line of lorries speeding down the freeway, where he is instantly killed.

Then, the body attached to the metal arm thuds its way towards the front of the car, and Natasha realises what it is about to do just before it does it, and only has seconds to react. She launches herself through the gap between the seats in front of her and into Steve’s lap where she wrenches his head forward to her chest, just as two bullets puncture the headrest where Steve’s head had _just_ been lying. She then uses her spare foot to push Sam as hard as she can to the right, just as another two shots fire straight through the headrest where _his_ head had just been moments before. Double whammy.

Steve, his head now free from Natasha's clutches, reaches over her lap to yank on the handbrake, bringing them to an extremely abrupt halt in the middle of the busy freeway. It has the effect Steve had hoped for, throwing their attacker off the roof of the car and into the center of the lane they are now parked in. They land about a hundred yards away, dragging the fingers of their metal arm into the concrete to bring them to a halt. Orange sparks flare off the tracks they make in the ground as their head slowly turns up to meet them. 

At the sudden brake, Natasha should have gone flying into the dashboard, but Steve had his arms held firmly around her, preventing her from moving. Together, along with Sam, they look up in shock horror at the scene of the man before them.

It is the Winter Soldier alright, and he has returned more merciless and cruel than ever. Long, straggly curtains of hair cover his face, already obscured by a jet black mask with goggles, framing it in an oddly unsettling way. His metal arm glints in the sunlight, the red star stamped at the top glaring at them like a death omen. He stands alone in the middle lane of the freeway, and cars swerve to avoid both him and the trio sitting shell-shocked inside the vehicle. All apart from one.

The Jeep comes so fast, so hard, that none of them have time to even register it’s presence before the pain hits. The gun Natasha had just been wielding falls into the black holes of between-the-seats, never to be seen again, as all three heroes go slamming into the dashboard, whiplash flaring up in all of their necks. The jeep continues to accelerate into the back of the car, moving it forward faster and faster towards the Winter Soldier, who is standing waiting. 

When they inevitably reach him, he leaps into the air, turning swiftly as he goes to land on his stomach on the roof of the car, his metal hand holding tight to the joint between front windscreen and roof. The glass shatters under his feet, resting on the back windscreen, as Sam struggles to maintain what little control over the car he still has. He slams down on the brake again and again, but to no avail. All that happens is that, as a result of the two forces acting against each other, more sparks begin to erupt from the point where the two acting objects: the tyres and the road, connect. 

Meanwhile, Natasha twists in Steve’s lap, her hand straining below the seat and desperately scrabbling around for the gun, but all she touches is dust and metal. 

The Winter Soldier uses his free hand to plunge through the front windscreen, earning screams from the inhabitants within. He seizes the actual, genuine, real steering wheel, in all its entirety, and forcibly _lifts it from the car_. Sam screams a curse as they all collectively realise they are now completely out of control, and not just of the car.

Natasha aims a round of shots desperately through the roof at the Winter Soldier, all of which bounce off the bulletproof armour that encases his torso, as he jumps from their car to the jeep that crashed into them. With no control of the car they are in, it and them go swerving across the freeway, colliding with other cars and careering into the barrier that runs down the middle. The jeep continues to pursue them, the Winter Soldier perched on top, and it rams into the back of them again and again, causing the car to crash into the side barrier again, but this time it turns up on its side, before crashing back down to the ground. Inside, Natasha holds onto Steve for dear life, her head burying into his chest. 

One wrong turn is all it takes.  
And that is exactly what happens. 

The car tips at an angle again, this time flying high into the air. Inside, Steve has moments to act. He yanks at the joint below him and to his right that connects the car door and the front hatch and positions his shield behind Natasha’s back. Then, pulling Natasha even closer towards him and using the other hand to grab Sam by the shoulder, he yells “Hang on!”, just as the car reaches the crest of the peak, and then plummets. 

The door breaks away from the car with the three of them huddled on it, while the rest of the car goes twisting and turning in the air, rolling several times before it hits the ground and soars far away in a wave of broken glass and crushed metal. The three of them on their car door land with a jolt so aggressive that it feels like Natasha’s internal organs have been permanently scrambled, and she didn't even get the worst of it. The door goes skidding after the broken wreckage of the car, all of them still hunched together on it, careening down the road. 

The momentum continues to carry them forward on this makeshift sled, as pieces of wreckage from the car in front of them fly off around them. Rogue wheels roll past them, broken glass scrapes at their dragging legs, and sparks from the friction flare hot beneath them. Then Steve loses his grip on Sam, and he goes bowling off the door, rolling for a few feet before drawing to a stop. Now it is just him and Nat. Ahead of them, the Jeep has parked neatly to the side, the Winter Soldier still eyeing them dangerously from on top of it as the door _finally_ loses its momentum and stops. Steve and Nat jump to their feet as the Winter Soldier dismounts the jeep, strolling leisurely towards them. From inside the Jeep, a man hands him a terrifyingly large, bulky machine gun, with what looks like dozens of rounds of ammunition that aren't even all bullets. He takes one, careful aim at Steve and Nat, and then fires.

Yep, that is not a bullet. 

‘It’ goes hurtling towards Steve, who in one motion pushes Nat out of the way and holds his shield up in front of him. The impact of the force of what looks like a grenade is so large that when it explodes, Steve is sent so far into the air and away, it seems like he is flying. He goes over the edge of the bridge and further, landing somewhere out of sight with a deafening crash. Little does Natasha know, he went charging into a bus full of passengers, which crashed into another one, flipping them both on their sides in an epic collision. 

Up on the bridge, Natasha has no time to worry about whether Steve is dead or not, because she is being advanced on and shot at by not only the Winter Soldier but by half a dozen armed soldiers having emerged from the Jeep as well. Her and Sam both dive behind the cover of adjacent cars, eyes squinting against the spray of bullets that puncture the metal they hide behind. Now somewhat protected, Natasha begins to shoot back at the men and the Winter Soldier, who still remains unfazed. He shoots another grenade at the car Natasha hides behind, forcing her to abandon it and propel herself over the divide between the highway roads. The blow of the explosion behind her throws her a little off balance, but she recenteres herself by rolling forward, narrowly avoiding a car that screeches to miss her. She climbs on and over another parked car in one lane with a grunt, the soldiers still shooting at her non-stop. _Some kind of machine gun!_ she thinks as she reaches the other side of the highway that crosses over a deserted road below. Just as she launches herself into the air over the second barrier, the car that had sat stationary behind her, explodes, undoubtedly because the Winter Soldier shot another grenade at it. 

The glass showers over her, sticking in her hair and clothes, as she makes the jump over the edge. The car follows her over, erupting in flames as she uses her split-second fall advantage to attach a grapple hook to the underside of the bridge, which slows her fall and allows her to swing down to the ground, the car colliding with the hot tarmac and bursting up in flames behind her. 

She breaks into a run in this tunnel under the bridge, slowly nearing the other side. Just as she is about to emerge from out under it, she sees the shadow of the Winter Soldier on the ground, waiting for her to make her appearance. She pauses, dragging herself to an unsteady stop as she retreats to a nearby wall of the tunnel and waits, watching his shadow carefully. It looks up in confusion as she misses her cue to come out, searching the areas ahead of her where a bus is tipped on its side, spewing smoke from its engines, and civilians flee the scene, screaming. Suddenly, she jumps out from her hiding spot and shoots once, twice, three and four times at him, earning one lucky hit at his goggles. _At least that’s one piece of armour rendered useless_ , she thinks.

As the Winter Soldier disappears behind the barrier on the bridge, Natasha retreats as fast as she can to the large cargo lorry that lies stationary a little bit ahead of the mouth of the tunnel, and waits for the Winter Soldier to attack again. Just as she had predicted, he does, his fury obviously ignited as he unleashes a slew of bullets everywhere around where he saw her last. She retaliates from her new hiding spot behind the cargo truck, shooting back at least a dozen times, before patiently withdrawing and waiting out the reply of rounds and rounds of shots fired her way, which come, but none hit her. 

When he pauses, she takes it as a sign that he is waiting for another round of retribution, so she turns and runs away from her spot, breaking into a full out sprint to get as far away from the Winter Soldier as she can.

This is no ordinary foe. She knows him. And she knows he will be ruthless when dealing with her, just because it is her.

That is what spikes the fear inside her that fuels her blood to pump faster throughout her body. If he gets her, there is a very real chance she will die. And she can't let that happen.

* * *

Inside the bus on its side, far away and under the bridge, Steve pants for breath as pain spreads through him, a result of the impact of his collision. He had previously evacuated everyone who had been on the bus when he crashed into it, so now it is just him, lying alone in the shell of this vehicle. He had collapsed after not being able to stand up for any longer, but now they have found him. Those people who had been with the Winter Soldier in that Jeep. They've come for him. 

_Does that mean they have killed Natasha already? Could she already be dead?_ Steve’s mind tortures him.

The first shots hit the bus mildly, or as mild as gunshots can be, rupturing the metal casing of the bus and forcing Steve to duck and cover his head. When they cease, he jumps agiley and rapidly to his feet to begin running.

Apparently not fast enough though, as when the first wave of bullets hit, he is still in the heart of the bus. The rounds of shooting are so constant, so unrelenting, so merciless and unnatural, that they don't even seem like gunshots. They pan the length of the bottom of the bus, or the side, for Steve inside, as he struggles to dodge and avoid the bullets. They ricochet off the walls around him, clanging on the metal and barely missing him as he darts between them, arms over his head. He finds himself aiming for the large window at the rear of the bus as he jumps into the air, and ends up crashing through it.

He lands with a painful smack on the ground, rolling over twice before stopping and finding himself on top of something cool, and hard, and round. _His shield!_ He can’t believe his luck.

He throws it up in front of him as the men continue to aim and shoot. The bullets just barely bounce off the shield, each making a deafening clanging noise as they do. As what seems to be _more_ men arrive on the scene, Steve is compelled to take action, or he will soon be overpowered. Using the steady stream of bullets that ricochet off his shield to his advantage, he turns the shield, angling it towards a new group of men. The bullets now bounce off the shield and hit the men, effectively knocking them down until there are less than three left.

The main one, with the biggest gun, continues to shoot at Steve, who begins to crawl closer to him under cover of his shield. The attacker stands on the crushed roof of a car, diligently firing shots at Steve. Another soldier tries to come to his aid and get around Steve to his back, but he is suddenly shot down from on high. When Steve glances up, he sees that Sam has managed to acquire a gun, and has shot the man trying to best him, but not the one on the car.

Meanwhile, Steve has begun to speed up in his advance, and suddenly breaks into a run, sprinting towards the man on the car, all the while holding his shield up to deflect the bullets. When he reaches the car, he jumps onto it and swings himself up and over the man, smashing him once, twice with the shield and bringing him down with him as he lands. The man’s gun goes flying away and he lands on his back with a crunch as Steve dismounts quickly from the car.

Sam is battling with even more men hiding behind cars from up on the bridge, but when Steve looks up and Sam sees him looking, he yells down, “Go! I got this!”

So Steve does.

* * *

Natasha’s heart beats a tattoo against her ribs as she crouches behind a car on one side of a road. Her rapid heartbeat reminds her of the time she had kissed Steve. She really hopes she gets to do that again. She doesn't want to die today, but the Winter Soldier takes no prisoners. 

And so she waits for him, having already planted the trap on the other side of the road, and she prays that he will take the bait. Natasha had sacrificed her handy device to this plan, using it to record a looped track of her speaking, repeating requests for backup. She had placed it behind a car across the street so it would look like she was crouched there, hiding. The idea was that the Winter Soldier would hear it, target it and she would gain the element of surprise on him. That’s if it works, however. 

Suddenly she hears his gun cock, hears him reloading it with undoubtedly more mini grenades. When she peeks under the car, she can just catch a glimpse of his boots, plodding slowly down the road towards where her car sits, just across from the trap.

“I make an LZ, twenty-three hundred block of Virginia Avenue.” the device repeats from across the street. “Rendezvous two minutes. Taking fire above and below expressway. Civilians threatened. Repeat, civilians threatened.” 

She knows he’s taken it. The bait. From under the car, she sees he has stopped deadly still, his body angled towards the car where she planted the device. Risking a peek through the car’s passenger window, she can just see the Winter Soldier, his back to her, crouching down next to the car. From a pocket, he retrieves a small metal ball, which Natasha recognises as a slightly larger hand grenade, and proceeds to roll it under the car towards where the device sits. Then he straightens up and poises his gun over his shoulder, ready. 

For a moment, everything is quiet. Then, it erupts.

The explosion blooms above and behind the car with a deafening boom, fiery orange flames soaring high into the air. Natasha takes the opportunity, and jumps.

The Winter Soldier doesn't see her coming until she is already there. She launches herself into the air and lands on his shoulders, immediately compressing his head with her thighs. In the same moment, she withdraws a long stretch of wire and pulls it tight around his neck, but before she can constrict it further, he manages to slip a hand up between his neck and the wire, and they grapple, Natasha pulling the rope tight, and the Winter Soldier fighting it off with his one lone hand. 

Together, they stumble backwards across the road, to where the car Natasha had hidden behind is, both falling against it as they struggle. The Winter Soldier then reaches his free hand around Natasha and lifts her up off him, throwing her back across the road where she lands on a car, and crumples to the floor with a groan.

The Winter Soldier picks up his previously discarded gun and points it furiously at Natasha, who is just getting to her feet. Before he can fire, she whips out a Widow Bite hidden in her clothing and flings it at him. It ignites in mid-air, glowing that electric blue Natasha always adored, and attaching right where she had wanted it, on the forearm of the Winter Soldier’s metal appendage. It falls to his side as the electricity crackles through it, conducting perfectly with the metal of his arm. Taking advantage of the distraction, Natasha flees.

She soon finds herself in a crowd of civilians and, knowing the Winter Soldier will be in hot pursuit of her, yells at them to run as she herself sprints across the square. “Get out of the way! Stay out of the way!”

Looking left and right again and again, she darts round car hoods and across crossings to escape. For an inkling of a moment, as she rounds the corner of a navy blue car, she thinks she has maybe lost him. And that’s when it happens.

The glass in the car next to her shatters, and is accompanied with a blinding pain to Natasha’s left shoulder. She cries out at the hit, collapsing to the ground. One hand pressed to her gunshot wound already flowing blood, she drags herself back behind the car, pressing her back to it as she gasps in distress and pain. Her mouth is wide open in shock, but unfortunately the shock does not carry out to the rest of her body, because Natasha can feel every single agonizing stab of pain that aches throughout her entire left side. The blood is gushing warmly down her hand, but she refuses to take the pressure away.

Now disabled, she looks around frantically for the Winter Soldier, because it was obviously him who shot her. If he finds her now, she’s as good as dead. Unarmed, with a dead, useless arm and a gaping, bleeding wound in her shoulder, she wouldn't stand a chance. And yet still, every randomly parked car surrounding her is empty, with no one hiding behind. Why hasn’t he found her yet? Confusion, mixed with fear, wrecks Natasha’s body. 

But it’s the thump of boots on metal that alerts her. She whips her head around to be greeted with Death, staring her straight in the face. The Winter Soldier stands there, gun in hand, defiant and successful in his hunt for her. 

_It’s time to give up now, Natalia. The game is over._

But then there is a flash of blue, white and red that flings itself at the Winter Soldier, and Natasha’s heart sings with relief.

_Steve._

She sees, from behind the car, the Winter Soldier’s fist as it collides with the centre of Steve’s projected shield, hears the echoing clang of hard metal on metal. The Winter Soldier’s foot hits Steve’s chest and he goes flying back down to the ground, where he immediately gets back up and shields himself from the oncoming blast of bullets. _At least he’s no longer focused on Natasha any more. He’ll kill him for hurting her._

Steve dives into a roll and sprints around the side of another car, ducking down low to avoid the shots that shatter the car windows. When the Winter Soldier stops to reload, he attacks, throwing himself over the roof off the car, and landing on him, blocking the gunshots with his shield and aiming kicks low at his stomach and high punches at his head.

When his shield next meets with the Winter Soldier’s metal arm again, he uses it to his advantage and dives at the open spot of his torso the Winter Soldier had left for him. However, this is blocked and Steve is tipped up and over when the Winter Soldier twists the shield, which attached to his arm. Steve lands on his feet, but now the Winter Soldier has the shield.

Steve hopelessly aims punches again and again, but each one is blocked. He does receive one back though, straight to the chest, and it sends him flying backwards where he hits the tarmac with a sickening thud. They both pause, looking at each other with equal intensity, before Steve pounces. The Winter Soldier slings the shield towards him, which Steve dodges, and it lodges itself in the metal of a van behind him. Steve continues to advance towards the Winter Soldier as he whips out a knife. He attacks with a newfound ferocity, jabbing at Steve left and right, one after another. They scuffle for what seems like far longer than it is, Steve continuously blocking the stabbing motions as they come. When it resorts to punches, Steve ducks once and then twice, but this time comes back with one that smacks the Winter Soldier straight in the face. He adds insult to injury with a roundhouse kick to his stomach which sends him into the side of a van ahead of them. Before the Winter Soldier can get up again, Steve runs at him and hits him square in the chest with his knee, dressing him into a window that shatters under the impact. 

When the Winter Soldier fights back and advances on Steve, he immediately backs away, blocking the punches and using an arm that wraps around the Winter Soldier to flip him over his shoulder and slam him to the ground, but ends up in a chokehold, with the metal arm constricting tight around his neck. He yells in protest as his throat begins to close under the Winter Soldier’s grip, before, suddenly, he lets go and throws Steve away from him. Steve just manages to roll away before the Winter Soldier’s metal fist crushes the concrete where his head had just been.

They wrestle again, Steve getting crushed against the very same van he had just pinned the Winter Soldier up against ‘s side, desperately holding off the knife that hovers above his head. He tries to move out from under it, causing his knife to dig into the metal behind him and drag along with an excruciating screech. Steve ducks just in time, wraps his arms around the Winter Soldier’s torso and throws him backwards behind him where he lands and rolls.

Steve sees his shield embedded in the side of the van and yanks it out, turning to fight the Winter Soldier just as he gets to his feet again. Steve earns a smack in the face at a small lapse in judgement as they dive and duck, dive and duck, their fight turning in some kind of repetitive dance. In retaliation, he digs his shield into the grooves in the Winter Soldier’s metal arm, generating a horrible tinny shriek as the metals grind together. When he releases him, Steve reaches round to the Winter Soldier’s face and uses it as leverage to yank him over his shoulder again where he lands and rolls, back to Steve.

Steve sees the mask that had been obscuring the majority of his face land a little way away from him, and when the Winter Soldier hesitates, so does Steve. It is at that moment, that he turns.

Nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared Steve for the overwhelming dumb-founded shock that he feels right now. He recognises this face, as if from a lifetime ago. Which it _was._ He hears the scream, painfully real in its imitation, ringing in his ears. The scream of the man who had fallen from the train all those years ago. _This man._

It’s impossible, and yet it's staring him straight in the face. 

“Bucky?” he says, but it feels like a whisper. Because he hasn't said that name in so long. Not since he told Natasha about him, and how he had watched him fall from a hundred foot drop, and die.

But the Winter Soldier just growls back at him.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This whole fight sequence was long, but the end one between Steve and the Winter Soldier? Did me out man, it was so freakin longgggg! I just felt like writing: ‘They fought. Then his mask got knocked off. The end.’  
> 2\. Natasha got shot! And Steve was all like *protective boyfriend mode engaged* ugh cute.  
> 3\. I feel like the joking around on the rooftop may have been the littlest bit OOC? But idk, i thought it was cute.
> 
> Anyways this is me out for a while cause I'm going away but I’ll see y’all soon in like a week.  
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	24. I Knew You'd Come Back To Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I’m back!  
> I missed writing this story like crazy, i'm not even joking.  
> Just a little WARNING for this chapter there is some mildly gory stuff to do with injuries and hospital treatment so if you're squeamish about that kinda stuff you may want to skip over it.  
> But there’s also a TON of soft and fluffy Romanogers with a lil angst stuff too so i wouldn't miss out on that either.  
> Here’s another long-ass chapter!

cardigan - Taylor Swift (stream it now)

LOCATION: WASHINGTON DC, 38.9072° N, 77.0369° W. SECRET FACILITY, 38.9296° N, 77.1163° W  
DATE(S): 09/24/2014, 09/25/2014

Pure, numbing shock comes in waves, rolling over Steve, as he stares into the eyes of a man he thought he had lost years ago. And apparently, one who has absolutely no recollection of him. While Steve’s eyes display only hurt and disbelief, the dark pits of his ex-best friend’s only show danger, ruthlessness and a thirst for blood. It is this which carries him forward towards Steve, gun raised and aimed to fire. However, before he can shoot, the boots of Sam Wilson in his Falcon wings hit the Winter Soldier’s back and send him rolling to the ground.

Sam lands on the ground, running a little down the road to lose his landing momentum, turning to the Winter Soldier just at the same time as Steve does too.

The two watch Bucky, or the Winter Soldier (whoever he is), as he gets to his feet, his facade broken and his eyes darting around fearfully. Yes, the previous glare of bloodthirsty anger had been replaced with a determined confusion, and fear as well as desperation. Steve can see that this man's head is a mess. He can only imagine what is going on inside. Bucky pulls out another gun in the next second, aiming it at Steve, but then a keening mechanical shriek echoes from behind Steve, and he ducks, just as a grenade goes hurtling over him and lands in the car next to Bucky. Steve flinches under his shield, protecting him from the blast as fire rages up from the car and point of impact. 

After the initial explosion had passed, Steve whirls around to where the source of the grenade launched had been and sees Natasha, slumped against a car, holding one of the grenade guns in her trembling arms and looking on in mild surprise at the destruction she has evidently caused. Fleetingly, Steve realises she has saved his life again. He reminds himself to thank her later. While his heart pulls him in her direction, to help relieve the pressure on her legs and attend to her bleeding shoudler, he knows he has to wait. Wait for Bucky.

But when he turns back to the car in flames, from which the clouds of smoke have now cleared, Bucky is not there. He has completely vanished into thin air, every trace of him ever being there gone, in just a second. Just like waking from a dream.

All three of them, Steve, Nat and Sam, stand there in the still chaos of the streets and the mess around them, all in shock. But no one worse than Steve. So much so that when the sirens sound and the sleek black cars pull up, men jumping out with guns and protective armour, he's isn't even fazed. Even as they bellow at him to drop to his knees, guns poised and posture extremely aggressive, he doesn't say a word. Just falls as they command, eyes fixed on the ground as rough hands are placed on him, holding him in place. Faintly, he registers the news helicopter hovering above them, and the anxious glances of the guards up at it as a gun is held to his head. He hears Rumlow murmur reluctantly to the holder of the firearm, “ Put the gun down.” But when the man continues to hold the gun menacingly up, he enforces, “Not here. Not here!”

The Strike agent finally lowers his gun, and strong bulky handcuffs are immediately slapped around Steve's wrists and he is forcefully lifted to his feet and shoved into the back of a van along with Natasha and Sam, who are already sitting inside. When he sees Natasha, everything suddenly becomes _real_ again, transitioning from black and white to sharp, defined colour. Steve's gaze focuses and his head finally steadies. As he is forced to sit on a metal bench opposite her by a vicious hand, the engine purrs to life and they begin to head off to… he doesn’t know where. Perhaps his execution site. His grave. His place of death. He welcomes it. 

In her seat, Natasha can feel herself fading.

The pain in her shoulder is gradually and permanently spreading down her left arm, accompanied by the warm drip of the blood as it slips down her leather jacket. The bullet is still embedded in her, deep below the surface of her skin, meaning the wound lies open and exposed under her jacket. With every drip of blood, her head becomes more foggy, her once-warm hands become more shaky, and the colour drains faster and faster from her face.

Natasha is no stranger to pain, or gunshot wounds as a matter of fact, but the pain never does get any easier. Easier to deal with perhaps, but it's always the same in itself. Always renders her weak, incredibly nauseous, and puts her in a weird dream state where words slur on their way out of her mouth, and her muscles contract and relax when they shouldn't. 

Through the haze, however, Steve’s voice breaks through to her. 

“It was him... He looked right at me, like he didn't even _know_ me.” Steve says, his voice lightly breaking and his eyes fixed on the floor of the trundling van.

“How is that even possible? It was like seventy years ago.” Sam reasons.

Natasha’s eyes flick up to look at Steve, his grubby face not quite dirty enough to hide the hurt she can see in his blue eyes. 

“Zola. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43, Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and…” Steve breaks off, the memory obviously too painful for him. Through it though, Natasha can see the guilt that tears at him as well. She knows he feels like he should have saved Bucky, that he failed him. Fighting the darkness that hovers at the edge of her vision, she speaks up, her words slurring in a soft murmur,

“None of that’s your fault, Steve.” 

Steve looks away, registering her reassurance but refusing to let himself believe it. 

“Back then, in the midst of...everything… in World War II…” he trails off, struggling to express what he needs to say. “Back then, even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

Natasha’s head lolls back in her seat, both an expression used to fight off a particularly strong bout of nausea, and also used to display her exasperation at Steve’s statement. Her eyes close as her head rocks back in an attempt to rid herself off the spinning and clunking of the moving van that rattles around her head, but it doesn't work all that well. 

The pain swells suddenly in her shoulder, but also manages to reach her head, where it surges and blinds her for a brief moment. Desperately, Natasha licks her dry, chapped lips, just about the strongest movement she can manage at the moment, in an attempt to revive her dwindling haze of existence.

She feels, rather than sees, Sam’s eyes on her, but the concern in his voice when he speaks is palpable. It touches Natasha. He barely even knows her, and he cares. “We need to get a doctor here. ‘We don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck.”

He directs his comment at one of the two guards sitting with them in the trucks. Clad in bulky black armour and holding electric rods, they sit squat and still, but even through their dark visors, it is clear their gaze is steady and calculating. At Sam’s demand, the one on the left brandishes the electric rod at Sam, effectively making him back off as it crackles. They hold it there, motionless for a moment. Then, all of a sudden, they slam the electric rod not towards Sam, but into the torso of their companion next to them, who jerks in the electricity, receives a kick in the head from the rogue guard and goes crumpling unconscious to the floor of the van in front of them. 

In dazed shock, Natasha, as well as Steve and Sam, look on at the guard, who wrenches the helmet off their head with an exclamation of relief. At the removal of the helmet, all three of them see S.H.I.E.L.D agent Maria Hill, Nick Fury’s left hand man and agent who had joined them at the hospital when Nick had died.

“That thing was squeezing my brain.” she says matter-of-factly, gesturing to the large helmet in her hands. Swiping a strand of stray hair away from her face, she scans the scene in the van before her, Natasha leaning semi-conscious against the wall of the van and looking at Hill in mild disbelief, Sam looking in plain confusion and dumb shock right back at her, and Steve, forlorn and dejected, looking at her in relief.

She looks from Sam to Steve. “Who’s this guy?” 

Of course. She hasn't met Sam.

* * *

After a brief explanation of why Maria is here (to rescue them, duh) and who Sam is (helper and saviour to our heroes), Hill does not hesitate to relinquish the trio of their bonds and then whip out her electric rod and carve a hole in the floor of the van. It makes rather a racket, and the whole time, Steve and Sam look around anxiously to see if anyone has noticed the noise. Together, Natasha, relying heavily on Steve to help her through, and the rest of them jump out of the bottom of the moving vehicle, landing themselves on a side street and rolling out from under the van as it drives away. 

Natasha groans as she hits the ground, and Steve immediately goes to her and helps her up, hand around her waist and body.

Maria Hill leads the trio to a nondescript beige old van parked down a side street, not unsimilar in make to the one they had just escaped, and gets in the driver's seat. Together, the rest of them in the back, they drive through more abandoned empty streets. It seems Hill is the only one who knows where they are going.

Steve and Nat sit in the back, Natasha’s head leaning against Steve as she slips finally in and out of consciousness. At one point, Steve retrieves a clean handkerchief from his pocket, which he presses to Natasha’s wound (to which she protests loudly at) in order to catch and hopefully stop the steady flow of blood that exits it, and now they sit huddled together as the van travels farther and farther away from Rumlow and his team, who are about to discover that Steve, and now his friends, have managed to escape them yet again. 

After what must be a good fifteen minutes, the van finally stops, and the driver door slams outside as Hill gets out and makes her way towards the back. She slides their door open, stepping back to let them exit. Steve is the first to get up, replacing his hand on the cloth against Natasha’s shoulder with her own, in order to help Natasha down after him. He jumps out and immediately turns to face Natasha, encircling her waist as she winces her way down and out of the vehicle, her hand tight on Steve’s arm the entire time. 

It seems they have arrived outside a colossal, ancient looking, brown and grey building, which has multiple stories and absolutely zero windows. Surrounded by woods, stains leak down the walls, suggesting this used to be some kind of factory that has since been abandoned, and small bodies of water collect below the bridge-type walkway they cross towards a tall iron gate embedded in the concrete. Maria pulls at the gate first, holding it open for Steve and Sam, both with a hand supporting Nat as they accompany her through. From the end of the long dark, murky tunnel they have entered comes a man in a suit, running towards them. 

Hill shouts down towards him, obviously referring to Natasha, pale and shaky under Steve’s arm. “GSW. She’s lost at least a pint.” 

“Maybe two.” Sam seconds as the doctor reaches them.

“Let me take her.” the doctor gestures, but Steve refuses to relinquish his grasp on her. Maria agrees, but for a different reason.

“She’ll want to see him first.” she says, and bewilderment strikes the already exhausted trio. Mainly Steve and Natasha, because they both have a vague idea of who the ‘he’ refers to, but logic tells them it is impossible.

Maria, along with the presumed doctor, who Steve swears he recognises from somewhere, lead Steve, Nat and Sam through dark and dingy tunnels to slightly a more civilised, inhabited area, full of bulky machines as well as tables and chairs, papers and various living appliances, then through this area to a curtained zone at the end.

When Maria yanks the curtain away to show what lies behind it, Steve, Nat and Sam are greeted with the impossible.

There, in a narrow hospital style bed, lies Nick Fury, inexplicably, impossibly, _alive_.

He turns his head slowly to meet them, a smirk hinting across his face. 

“About damn time.”

* * *

Still in disbelief as well as shock at the blatant lie of yet another major figure in their lives that sits impossibly in front of them, both Steve and Nat take seats by the bed as gestured to by Hill. The doctor, which Steve now recognises as being from the operating room where Nick had died, or… did not die, gestures to Natasha to come closer so he can attend to her wound. Thankful to sit down again, she obliges, scooting closer on her stool to the doctor, who puts on a pair of surgical gloves and gently takes the stained cloth off Natasha’s wound, beginning to address the injury. 

Meanwhile, Steve struggles between demanding to know what happened with Fury and looking after Natasha, who is wincing in pain as the doctor pokes and prods at the hole in her shoulder. Eventually, he decides on the latter, going over to Natasha and crouching down beside her. He helps her out of the leather jacket caked in blood so that the doctor can get to the gunshot wound more easily, and takes her hand to steady her as the man picks up a shining set of tweezers, evidently planning to go in and fetch the bullet. Maria Hill, Sam and Fury from the bed look on, murmuring between each other, making introductions. Natasha would have wanted them to continue while she is treated, but she knows they would refuse, demanding she be taken care of first before an explanation is provided. With the exception of perhaps the doctor, everyone in this room cares about Natasha’s wellbeing immensely. 

The dull ache in Natasha’s shoulder suddenly transforms into a searing, sharp pain worse than anything she has experienced recently as the doctor digs around in her to find the bullet, and Natasha sucks in a quick breath through her teeth, clinging on tight to Steve’s hand and squeezing it fast. She holds there for a minute, squeezing and squeezing until... _clang_ , the bullet is out, and falls lightly into the metal tray in the doctor's free hand. She looks at it, matte and coated in dark blood, a bullet about the size of her thumbnail sitting in the tray. Natasha has half a mind to cast it the middle finger, but before she can decide whether she can be bothered, a strong wave of dizziness falls like water over her. She sways in her seat, Steve automatically steadying her by placing a hand on her back. Together they both look in dread down at the wound which has now begun to bleed, heavily. Long trails of thick, dark blood dribble down her shoulder and arm for a few seconds before the doctor presses a bandage to it as fast as he can. 

Once confident Natasha is not about to pass out for real, Steve gets to his feet and approaches the bed, just as eager for an explanation about Fury as Natasha is, perched on her stool.  
Fury seems to notice the silent command and sighs, before opening his mouth to speak. 

“Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver… one hell of a headache.” he lists his damages one by one. Steve and Nat both stare at him incredulously.

“Don't forget your collapsed lung.” the doctor adds from the corner, where he sits with both hands firmly pinning either side of Natasha’s shoulder in what looks to Steve like an attempt to push the blood _back in_.

“Oh, let’s not forget that.” Fury quips sarcastically from the bed. “Otherwise, I’m good.”

Betrayal stings in Natasha almost as strong as the bullet that is now removed from her body. “They cut you open, your heart stopped.” she protests.

“Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it.” Nick explains, as Steve flashes back to the scene of devastation in the operating room. 

“ _BP dropping!”_

_“Defibrillator!”_

_“Time of death, 1:03…”_

The hurt he had felt, the grief he knew Natasha had felt, even if she tried not to show it. The tears she had failed to hide, because he could always see through her. It made him furious, what he had put Natasha through. And for what? For nothing!

“Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?” he says angrily. 

“Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful.” Hill steps in.

“Can't kill you if you're already dead.” Nick adds. There is a pause. “Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust.”

In the corner, Natasha’s heart plummets in her chest. Apparently she hadn't been worthy of his trust. And she had paid dearly for it. Unnoticed by all, including Natasha, the walls inside of her begin to build themselves back up again.

As time passes and the brief respite begins to morph itself before their eyes, the group finally begin to relax. It has been such a long time since Steve and Nat haven’t had to worry about watching their own and each other's backs, wondering who and where they need to look out for, and how long they have to escape their clutches. It has been so long since they haven’t had to worry about where they will be sleeping next, or where to get their next meal from. It is a welcome calm, even if there is a storm looming just on the horizon. 

They are supplied decent food and a comfortable place to rest their heads, even if only for a brief time. In a side room with a medical bed and more advanced equipment, the doctor has finished applying pressure to Natasha’s wound and is fiddling around in boxes for something. Steve watches him and Natasha closely from the uncomfortable couch he lies on across the room, observing her bleached, ghost-like face. The doctor pulls out an IV kit. 

“Do you know your blood type? I was hoping to do a transfusion but I only have a few bags of only a couple types.” 

“She’s O Positive.” Steve supplies.

Natasha looks over at him and smiles weakly, both of them remembering the same thing. One night in early 2014, they had accidentally dropped a bunch of beer bottles on the floor, and Natasha had slipped on them. A drunken, late night trip to the ER meant dirty jokes and blood transfusions through to 2AM, but it was a night neither of them would ever forget. Left in the examination room alone, blood snaking into Natasha’s arm, they had taken it upon themselves to use a separate kit to determine Steve’s blood type too, which happened to be O Negative. They had laughed about this, joking that opposites attract and that somehow Natasha was positive and Steve was negative, which seemed unfitting for their personalities. The night had ended in Natasha leaving the hospital prematurely, and Steve helping her home, where they had both collapsed on the couch together, not waking until 4PM the next day. 

“That’s perfect, I have two bags of O Positive right here.” the doctor says, pulling out two plump bags of dark blood with large white labels on the font. After injecting the needle into Natasha’s forearm, he attaches the first bag of blood to a IV drip stand and, once the blood is flowing steadily, leaves the room.

There is a brief quiet, where Natasha lies back, eyes closed with her arm outstretched, and Steve watches her for a moment.

“You know we can only do this for so long.” Steve speaks into the silence.

“What? Lie here and sleep, or have a small restbite in and amidst this life of madness?” 

“Both, really. We’re gonna have to get up soon, and plan and stuff, because there’s no way we can let Project Insight commence. We’re on a clock. It launches soon.”

“But I also recently got shot in the shoulder, Rogers, and have been walking around with just below half the amount of blood I _should_ have in my body for far too long, so I would really appreciate just two seconds of peace and quiet before I jump back up and throw myself into another suicide mission, thanks very much.” Natasha retorts sarcastically, eyes still closed but smiling.

Steve smiles wearily, getting to his feet with a sigh. He passes Natasha, plants a kiss on her forehead, and leaves the room.

It takes him a while, but soon he finds the others, Fury, Maria Hill and Sam huddled together in a side room around a table that lies in the centre. Fury is up and out of bed, sitting in a chair next to the table, on which sits a large briefcase and scattered piles of paper. Beside him sits Maria Hill, also surrounded by various screens and laptops, paper and pens. When Steve approaches, the conversation dies between them. Fitting, he thinks.

Before he can start up another one however, there comes a small shuffling noise from behind, and when he turns, he sees Natasha entering the room after him, her wound now safely bandaged up and the IV forcibly removed from the inside of her elbow. Steve frowns at her, disapproving of her premature ditching of the blood transfusion, but she shushes him silently and moves to sit in a seat at the other end of the table from Fury. At least the colour has returned to her face, Steve thinks. 

Fury picks up a print photo from the top of the pile in front of him, on which can be seen a younger version of Alexander Pierce, dated the 18th September 1992. Speaking to the room at large, Fury says,

“This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said, ‘Peace wasn't an achievement, it was a _responsibility_.’ See, it's stuff like _this_ that gives me trust issues.” 

Natasha struggles not to roll her eyes at the hypocrisy. _You have trust issues, huh?_

“We have to stop the launch.” she says to distract herself from snapping at Fury, looking up at Steve for confirmation. He meets her gaze with a steady one of his own, instantly calming her.

“I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore.” Nick says, opening the case in front of him. Inside, everyone sees three chips, each around the size of a human’s palm, sitting encased in black foam. 

“What's that?” Sam asks, but he is ignored.

“Once the helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites, becoming fully weaponized.” Maria Hill explains, turning a separate screen to face the group, which displays electronic animations of the helicarriers in action. It references what Fury had shown to Steve in the basement of the Triskelion what seemed like years ago now.

“We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own.” Fury continues, as all eyes scan the screen which displays their mission in a literal sense, zooming in to the center of the helicarrier where there sits a long column, containing dozens and dozens of the same chips that Fury has in his case.

“One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational... a whole lot of people are gonna die.” Maria adds grimly, looking up to all of the people in the room in turn.

Fury expands. “We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We need to get past them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left-”

“We’re not salvaging anything!” Steve interrupts. “We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“ _S.H.I.E.L.D_ had nothing to do with this!” Nick argues back angrily. 

“You gave me this mission, this is how it ends.” Steve barks, jabbing a finger down on the table between them. “S.H.I.E.L.D's been compromised, you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and _nobody noticed_.”

“Why do you think we’re meeting in this cave?” Nick hisses. “ _I noticed._ ” 

“And how many paid the price before you did?” Steve says, lowering his voice to a growl.

Nick’s eyes fall back down in shame, looking ashamedly at his comrades before settling into silence. He understands what Steve is referencing to, and wishes he had been quicker to address it. 

“Look, I didn't know about Barnes.” 

“Even if you had, would you have told me? Or would you have ‘compartmentalized’ that too?” Steve hurls Fury’s words back at him in anger. “S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA, it all goes.” 

“He’s right.” comes a small voice from beside Fury. He looks round to see Maria, whose eyes are surprisingly filled with tears. She nods encouragingly, clearly agreeing with Steve.

Fury then turns to Natasha, who, in response, sits back in her seat gradually and deliberately, making it clear where her loyalties lie. Dead, in the operating room where Nick was supposed to have died too. He betrayed her trust. He misjudged her. He doesn't deserve her support and yet he has the audacity to ask for it. But Steve does deserve it, and he has proved it to her time and time again. She stands with him.

Fury turns to the last person in the room aside from Steve, which happens to be Sam standing in a corner. He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, nodding to Steve. “Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower.”

Fury looks back down to the table, defeated. Resignedly, he looks back up to Steve. “Well... Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain.”

Steve stares right back at him, the steady gaze of a man who knows his worth.

* * *

It is time to act, and yet Steve can't move a muscle. He knows, going into this, that he will be confronted with Bucky again. But this man, this dark-eyed, dangerous man, isn't his Bucky. He isn't the rugged young man who got any woman (or man) he wanted, who accompanied Steve to the cinema on Sundays, and bought extra change because he knew Steve would forget his. He wasn't the Bucky who laughed with him, and who accepted him in his every shape and form. And he doesn't know how to deal with this... stranger.

He has to escape, and so he does. He finds a bridge on the top of the facility, ignoring Natasha’s concerned glance at his departure of the room, and her hand on his sleeve. He stands on the top of the world here, but has never felt smaller. 

Bucky. The word used to tear at him, opening a cavern in his chest as wide as the one Bucky had fallen into in World War II. He misses him, and wants him back. Is there a chance now? Now that he is alive, can Steve bring him back? He doesn't know, but he knows that he wants to try.  
Because for the life of him, that one memory won't leave him.

It was that one. The one after his mother’s funeral. Sarah Rogers. On the way back to his house. He remembers it as if it were yesterday.

_“We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery.” Bucky says as they mount the stairs to his apartment door._

_“I know, I'm sorry. I just...kind of wanted to be alone.” pre-serum Steve says, his eyes fixed on the ground._

_“How was it?”_

_“It was okay. She's next to Dad.” he says, the acknowledgement of himself as parentless hitting him rather hard in that moment._

_“I was gonna ask-”_

_“I know what you're gonna say, Buck, I just…” he trails off, hopelessness filling him to the brim and more._

_“We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids. It'll be fun. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash.”_

_Steve knows he’s trying to help, but the emptiness inside him refuses to let him. They have reached the apartment door, and Steve rummages in his pocket for his keys. After coming up empty, Bucky steps back and kicks aside a brick on the floor a couple feet back. Under it is a key, which he picks up and gives to Steve.  
“Come on.”_

_“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own.” Steve refuses his help, taking the key gratefully._

_“The thing is, you don't have to.”_

_Bucky reaches forward and clasps Steve’s shoulder._

_“I'm with you to the end of the line, pal.”_

With a jolt, Steve is yanked back to the present, as Sam approaches him on the bridge in his green shirt and jeans.

“He’s gonna be there, you know?” 

Steve continues to stare heavily out onto the forest surrounding the facility. “I know.”

“Look, whoever he used to be, the guy he is now... I don't think he's the kind you save. He's the kind you stop.” Sam explains gently to Steve.

Steve’s steady facade breaks, and he looks away from his fixed point on the horizon. “I don't know if I can do that.” 

“Well, he might not give you a chance. He doesn't know you.”

“He will.” Steve assures. He will make sure he does, if it is the last thing he does. He takes a deep breath in, breaking fully from his trance and turning to Sam. “Gear up, it's time.”

Steve walks away from Sam, dedication and determination coursing through his veins like fire. He will get Bucky back. He has to.

Behind him, Sam rolls his eyes. “You gonna wear that?” he calls after Steve.

“No,” Steve replies over his shoulder. “If you're gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform.”

Over in the Smithsonian Institute, night has fallen, and an unlucky security guard has just stumbled upon the empty mannequin that once displayed Captain America’s first ever suit, bare and naked.  
“Oh, man. I am _so_ fired!”

* * *

The clock is ticking, the launch is happening midday tomorrow, and all the time they have to plan is this night and this night only. Together, in one single room, through the darkness, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson frantically plan ahead for the mission of… well, they would say the mission of a lifetime, but this is mostly their everyday job. So… just a mission? Still, one that is dependent on the lives of millions, as well as their own. 

As time goes by and the shadows grow longer, Natasha’s shoulder begins to ache less, and when morning finally dawns, she removes the large bandage that binds her entire chest, and replaces it with a smaller one that sticks like a Band-Aid to her skin. She takes a suit acquired by Fury off Hill, and changes into it while Steve goes on the hunt for his. Sam dons his great Falcon wings and they all begin to collectively gather up any remnants of their presence in this abandoned facility. They have to make it look like they were never there.

Steve splits off with Maria and Sam to infiltrate the Triskelion from the bottom floor, while Natasha and Fury head to the higher-ups and the top floor, and Alexander Pierce, to control the launch from above.

But before they part, Natasha holds out her arms to Steve, who immediately goes into them. She holds him tight, feeling him and his warm heat and his heartbeat, breathing in his scent, clasping his overgrown hair, and whispers her plea into the dark of his shoulder. 

“Come back to me.”

No one knows what will happen on this mission, the aim being to take down the people who once led them, and to an extent controlled them, and Natasha knows Steve is going straight back into his past. Anything could happen, and she has grown too much in the time she has spent with him to lose it all now. She needs him, and she needs him to come back.

Steve doesn't answer, but just pulls Natasha just a little closer to him, burying his head in her hair, and swallows the words that beg to escape his lips.

 _Come back to me,_ she had said.

He’ll be damned if he doesn't try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be honest, I cried a lil writing this chapter, seeing how much Steve and Nat have grown. That moment when they share a glance and that memory, and that moment at the end when they promise to come back to each other, their friendship makes the relationship so much better. They're so pure, and Natasha is a whole different person with him. Steve is so protective too, ugh, cute.  
> Taylor Swift's songs also go so perfectly with these two I just HAD to use one from her new album (go stream it it's called folklore).  
> Anyways, hope you liked it. We're drawing close to the end of CATWS and Book 2!  
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	25. Bury Me In All My Favourite Colors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeesh, this chapter really took a while to get up, but it is the entire of the final battle at the end of TWS and is longer than any other chapter i have written before tho so…  
> Also K if you're reading this, this chapter is barely worth reading, the film will cover it in no time anyways, just skip to the end bby.  
> This chapter though… it was literally just all fighting and next to no romanogers i swear… it was so boorrinng to write but anyways it's just a filler chapter and 26 will be a lot better i promise !!

Cancer - Twenty-One Pilots 

LOCATION: THE TRISKELION, WASHINGTON DC, 38.8967° N, 77.0630° W, THE POTOMAC RIVER, DC, 39.01817° N 77.20859° W  
DATE: 09/25/2014

Their mission has begun.

Natasha’s photostatic veil hums as it glides down the length of her body, transforming it into the appearance of Pierce’s associate and council member, Hawley. She looks in the mirror with satisfaction, and smiles.

Over in the ground level rooms of the Triskelion, Steve, Maria and Sam have infiltrated the building and are rapidly approaching the door to the control room every passing second. From here, Steve has a special announcement to make. 

Back in the atrium of the Triskelion, Natasha has slipped in amidst the other councilmembers meeting with Pierce, and moves to the front of the group to make conversation as they head through the large open floor.

“And how was your flight?” Pierce asks Natasha disguised as the councilwoman. 

“Lovely.” she replies in character as they walk through the atrium on the way to the top floor. “The ride from the airport, less so.”

“Sadly, S.H.I.E.L.D can't control everything.” Pierce supplies as an excuse. 

Councilman Rockwell from the other side of Pierce speaks up dryly. “Including Captain America.”

Natasha stifles a secret smile at Pierce’s embarrassment as they are approached by a S.H.I.E.L.D guard holding a briefcase. Inside contains four small pins, not unlike a name label, which he hands out to all four councilmembers. 

“This facility is biometrically controlled, and these will give you unrestricted access.”

Natasha fastens hers to the lapel on her coral blue coat, a little suspicious, but only naturally so. This man cannot be trusted with anything.

The group travels up to the very top floor, where Alexander Pierce’s office sits, above all, not unlike the throne of a dictatorship. The windows around it are wide, open, and are made of pure glass, and a stopwatch detailing how long until the launch hangs prevalent on the transparent screen behind Pierce as he talks.

“I know the road hasn't exactly been smooth, and some of you would have gladly kicked me out of the car along the way.” Pierce smirks, and hatred bubbles within Natasha. “Finally we're here, and the world should be grateful.” he finishes, raising his glass of champagne in a toast… to himself.

Everyone around him gifted with a glass of champagne raises them too, but suddenly a voice blares overhead through speakers embedded throughout the entire building. Natasha’s heart warms when she hears it’s Steve’s.

“Attention, all S.H.I.E.L.D agents. This is Steve Rogers.” The other councilmembers look around in surprise, trying to find the source of the sound, and Natasha joins in. “You've heard a lot about me over the last few days... some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth.”

There is a long pause, and Natasha knows Steve is preparing himself. This is the make or break. There is no coming back from this now. “S.H.I.E.L.D is not what we thought it was. It's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader.” All eyes turn to the man in question, who is slowly pacing the room, not panicked, but not calm and collected either. 

“The Strike and Insight crew are HYDRA as well. I don't know how many more, but I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you... They almost have what they want: absolute control.”

Natasha sees Pierce, from the back of the room, taking what looks like a mobile phone device out of his jacket pocket.

“They shot Nick Fury, and it won't end there. If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high, it always has been... and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not.”

Steve finishes his speech, and from over his shoulder, Sam grins in respect. “Did you write that down first, or was it off the top of your head?”

Back on the top floor of the Triskelion, councilman Rockwell glares at Pierce. “You smug son of a bitch.” 

But before anyone can take any action, a small Strike team, including the man who had held a gun to Steve’s head on the highway enter, swaggering into the center of the room. A councilmember standing at the front of the group looks pointedly from the Strike members to Pierce.   
“Arrest him!” 

But instead of ambushing Pierce, they pull their guns on the councilmember, who Natasha remembers is called Singh, making his brow furrow in shock and confusion. 

“I guess I’ve got the floor.” says Pierce.

Meanwhile, after a vicious gunfight in the main control room, the timed launch sequence of the helicarrier has unfortunately been overridden, and now the dam bunkers beneath the Potomac river are opening prematurely, and the fight to stop them has begun.

All three of the great, colossal machines are now rising higher and higher into the air, and now the crew’s task to stop them has just got a lot harder.

From the window on top of the Triskelion tower, Natasha can just see the explosions from the helicarriers in the air of the grenades sent in the direction of a bird-like silhouette flying and dodging through the sky. _Sam._ If he has made it onto the helicarrier, Steve must have, or be close to doing so too. She hopes he isn’t dead yet.

Pierce moves from his position looking out of the window too, back to the center of the room where councilmember Singh stands. 

“Let me ask you a question.” he directs at Singh. “What if Pakistan marched into Mumbai tomorrow, and you knew that they were gonna drag your daughters into a soccer stadium for execution?”

Pierce hands Singh his glass of champagne. The _audacity._

“...And you could just stop it with a flick of the switch. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you _all_?” He aims the last sentence at the room at large, who all greet him with silence.

“Not if it was your switch.” Singh says savagely, and flings the champagne glass Pierce had given him to the other side of the room, where it shatters on the floor.

Alexander Pierce stares at him for a long moment, before chuckling maliciously and reaching for a gun that a Strike/HYDRA team member had handed him. Natasha’s eyes level in on it dangerously. When Pierce whips the gun up and aims it at Singh, that’s when Natasha takes action.

She raises a fast kick at Singh’s side, which sends him out of target range of the gun, before she runs at Pierce, taking the hand holding the gun steady in hers and slapping him hard across the face. She throws a concealed Widow Bite at an approaching guard, then darts under Pierce’s arm, twisting it and using the leverage to make him throw the gun away where it hits another guard, straight in the face. Then she smacks another one, knees him straight in the groin and throws him to the ground with a hand around his neck. From there, she grabs yet another attacking guard and smashes his head against the nearby table, sending him unconscious and to the floor. She elbows the last guard once in the back with a satisfying crack, and then flings him over her shoulder and to the ground with a sickening thump. Before she stands up, she disarms him of his gun, and rises to meet the waiting Pierce.

He stands, shocked, cradling his bruised cheek where she had smacked him earlier. Confusion marks his face, as he knows councilmember Hawley has nowhere near these kinds of capabilities within her. To this, Natasha reaches up to the small concealed chip at her temple which disables the photostatic veil, and presses it. Her appearance begins to shimmer and transform, morphing into tiny particles that connect like pixels over her face in a strange kind of mask. Slowly, she pulls it from her face, revealing her true appearance. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice distorting as it returns to its usual manner without the mask. Then Natasha removes her wig, releasing her flowing red hair.

“Did I step on your moment?” she says with a triumphant smirk.

* * *

Launch is in eight minutes, and Steve is well aware of it. Sam, however, is thriving with his Falcon wings, if only barely avoiding getting hit, and has made it onto the bay of one of the helicarriers, but Steve is still fighting his way on the ground through waves of HYDRA guards to get to the same place.

Up in the Triskelion, Natasha is completing a much more subtly dangerous task. With the rest of the council members holding guns to Pierce, she has approached the computer detailing the countdown and other criteria of the launch. On this, she has, using her expert technological and computer server knowledge, managed to access all of S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA’s secrets, and is assembling them all to release to the world systematically.

The supercomputer hums as she works, the rest of the room eerily silent as they watch her. Councilmember Rockwell speaks, “What are you doing?”

“She's disabling security protocols and dumping all the secrets onto the Internet.” Pierce explains for her bitterly.

“Including HYDRA’s.” Natasha says.

“And S.H.I.E.L.D’s.” Pierce points out. Natasha stays silent.

“If you do this, none of your past is gonna remain hidden.” he enforces. Her hands pause in their typing, frozen. Just how much _does_ S.H.I.E.L.D have on her? The KGB, the Red Room, all of it? Every mission since? _Steve?_

Her eyes glaze over at this thought, and it isn't until they refocus that she realises she has been gazing unknowingly at Pierce. He smirks, knowing he has caught her attention. As soon as she realises her slight pause and error in judgement, she resumes the assembling and decrypting of the information even faster in order to cover up the slip she had made.

“Are you sure you're ready, for the world to see you as you really are?” Pierce sneers, but Natasha is no longer listening. Her cool facade has now replaced her moment of weakness, and she looks back up at Pierce with an equal amount of confidence.

“Are _you_?”

* * *

In the main control center of helicarrier Alpha, Steve runs the length of the radius of this upside down dome in the belly of the ship straight to the centre, where one of the columns displayed on the screen Hill had shown them sits. He immediately starts activating the release, each of the buttons on the keypad beeping as he presses them. The platform inside whines as it lowers the desired level to Steve’s reach. There sits the chip he is tasked with replacing. 

He tugs at the chip in the midst of its fellows and replaces it with the one inside his pocket. It clicks into place, lighting up with a little chirp. He speaks into his com. “Alpha locked.”

One down, two to go.

After a close call with the jets tailing him, Falcon reaches his target with the second chip. Helicarrier Bravo. He activates the release of the console, watches the platform drop, replaces the chip and doesn't stick around to watch the platform rise again. He jumps over the edge of the railing, calling into his intercom. “Bravo locked!”

Two down. One to go.

However, a wrench in the form of a soldier called Bucky Barnes is about to be thrown into the works. Freshly re-programmed and shooting to kill, he eliminates all fighting S.H.I.E.L.D members attempting to give Steve air support and instead climbs into the remaining quintjet himself, and flies to the last helicarrier to stop Steve.

* * *

On the screen in front of Natasha, the files clear away to make room for the final command, but text blinking ‘RESTRICTED ACCESS’ fills the screen instead. This shouldn't be an issue though. Pierce, now intrigued, looks calculatingly at Natasha.

“Disabling the encryption is an executive order, it takes two Alpha Level members.” he says, and Natasha looks up.

“Don't worry, company's coming.” she smiles slyly, just as the whirring noise from outside reaches an audible pitch. 

Everyone in the room looks around to see a sleek black helicopter land on the helipad outside the office. The dark boots that step out are somewhat shrouded by a flowing black cape, and it is unclear who the person is before they reach the door to the inside, and enter.

Nick Fury, regal and thunderous in his gaze, stares unblinking at Pierce. Pierce is shocked, but tries to hide the emotion as Nick enters the room.

“Did you get my flowers?” he says, hands on hips in an attempt to exude confidence. He fails. He looks like a cowardly rat caught red-handed and still trying to wriggle his way out of it.

Nick glares at him coldly, and Natasha, who had stopped to watch Nick’s entrance, turns back to the computer and begins typing again.

“I'm glad you’re here, Nick.”

“Really? Cause _I_ thought _you_ had me killed.” Nick says as he approaches Pierce.

“You know how the game works.”

“So why make me head of S.H.I.E.L.D?” he enquires as Natasha continues behind them both.

“Cause you were the best and the most ruthless person I ever met.”

“I did what I did to protect people.” Nick growls aggressively. 

“Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war. It's just a matter of time before a dirty bomb goes off in Moscow, or an EMP fries Chicago. Diplomacy? Holding action, a band-aid. And you know where I learned that... Bogota.”

Nick’s glare turns to fire, boring into Pierce like knives. Natasha is surprised he doesn't wince from it. He continues. 

“You didn't ask, you just did what had to be done. I can bring order to the lives of seven billion people by sacrificing twenty million.” ( **AN: this has Thanos vibes** ) “It's the next step, Nick, if you have the courage to take it.”

“No, I have the courage not to.” Nick returns fiercely, taking Pierce by the arm and yanking him towards the screen Natasha stands behind. He positions him in front of it as Natasha enters the final command and joins them, raising a cautionary gun to Pierce’s head. 

“Retinal scanner active.”

“What, you don't think we wiped your clearance from the system?” Pierce scoffs, but Fury just rolls his eyes and interrupts him.

“I know you erased my password, probably deleted my retinal scan, but if you want to stay ahead of me, Mr. Secretary…” he says, and reaches up to his face. With shock, Natasha watches him remove the eyepatch covering his damaged eye, which is horribly scarred, lines slashing across his face, the iris a milky white. 

“...You need to keep _both eyes open._ ”

He nods pointedly to the screen, which Pierce resignedly turns to and the machine beeps to life. 

“Alpha Level confirmed. Encryption code accepted. Safeguards removed.”

* * *

On the way to the last helicarrier, Steve and Sam work together to avoid the guards with huge weapons firing at them, including a close miss when Steve jumps off the side of a helicarrier for Sam to catch him, placing all his faith into the man and trusting that he would catch him. He does, but it sure does put a strain on his wings, and they just barely make it up onto the bay of the very last helicarrier.

They land on the runway and make their way down it together.

“You know, you’re a lot heavier than you look.” Sam says.

“I had a big breakfast.” Steve jokes, making Sam chuckle, but then out of nowhere a flash of black and silver collides with Steve and sends him _off the edge of the helicarrier entirely_. Sam cries out for Steve and darts to the edge, planning to fly over and catch him, but the flash of silver and black, now identified as the Winter Soldier, grabs onto his wing with his metal arm, pulling him back up and throwing him backwards.

Sam saves himself from the fall with his wings, pulling out two pistols and shooting at the Winter Soldier, forcing him to retreat. Just as Sam goes to make his escape, the Winter Soldier shoots a grapple that hits Sam’s left wing, and wrenches him down to the ground. With one more strong yank, Sam’s left wing comes clean off, rendering him tragically flightless. Bucky then leaps at Sam, kicking him up and off the helicarrier and plummeting down to the ground a thousand feet below. In a panic, he struggles to deploy his remaining wing and consequently his parachute as he rolls in the air, just managing to land on the roof of the Triskelion with only minor injuries and a hell of a bruise. 

Now safe, Sam shouts frantically into his intercom to Steve. “Cap? Cap, come in. Are you okay?”

On the side of the helicarrier where he had managed to grab on, Steve pants in the exertion of attempting to pull himself up. In response to Sam, he gasps into his intercom, “Yeah, I'm here! I'm still on the Helicarrier.” he finally heaves himself up onto the smooth metal surface. “Where are you?” 

“I’m grounded, the suit’s down. Sorry Cap.”

“Don't worry, I got it.” Steve reassures Sam, but what he doesn't see is Bucky watching him from the top of the helicarrier, and his disappearance out of sight to the lower floors. To the same place as Steve. 

Dread, and fear, and anxiety, as well as anticipation almost overwhelm Steve as he nears the final dome where the final column of chips sits. The pressure on him is outstanding, but it's nothing he hasn't experienced before. The price of being one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

When he reaches the bridge, the metal platform of grates that scrape beneath his boots with handrails up the sides, Steve is too in his head to notice. A fatal mistake. When he does look up, he is forced to stop dead in his tracks.

He would say he didn't expect this to happen, but he did. Hell, he _wanted_ it to happen even. Expected, wanted, it so much as to go to extra lengths to help the scenario go well if it ever came about. But this time, he’s on the wrong end. Again.

Steve stares at Bucky in his Winter Soldier gear, arm glinting in the glare of sunlight, hair long and messy, eyes dark and brooding. A bitter kind of dread fills him as he realises that Bucky has no recollection of their previous meeting, and his calling of Bucky. Whatever they did to him before, they have done again. There is no recognition in Bucky’s eyes. Only anger and destruction. He speaks first.

“People are gonna die, Buck. I can't let that happen.”

Bucky continues to stand still as a statue, his eyes boring into Steve’s.

Steve’s voice almost breaks as he pleads. “Please, don't make me do this.”

He would rather anything than to be forced to fight his best friend to the death. But anything is not an option. 

The deadliness in Bucky's eyes is unrelenting, and with sorrow, Steve resigns himself to the fact that he will be fighting to kill. His best friend. He flings his shield towards Bucky, who deflects it and sends it straight back to Steve, but Steve has already advanced towards him and uses his caught shield to ricochet the bullets sent his way by Bucky and his gun. He blocks more and more shots as the two gradually advance towards the centre console full of microchips, but one bullet somehow manages to graze the side of Steve’s arm and he grunts in pain.

When Bucky jumps towards him, Steve smacks him in the head with the shield, the force of the blow sending him flying backwards into the ramp leading up to the console. Steve watches as Bucky slowly gets to his feet, dazed but mostly unharmed, and unsheathes a knife from his belt. Disappointed but not surprised, Steve reluctantly backs up and then meets Bucky holding his knife in the middle, aiming punches at him left and right, all of which are blocked, all while dodging jabs at his midsection with the knife in Bucky’s hand. Both of their arms sweep through the air as they aim for each other, both missing and being blocked by one another time and time again. An even match.

Bucky suddenly switches to trying to knock Steve’s legs out from under him using his foot, and the two engage in a new and complex kind of dance with their feet, kicking in the air and being met with one another’s feet each time. When Bucky aims another punch at Steve with his metal arm and Steve blocks it with the shield, the force of the impact between the two equally strong metals sends Bucky into the air again, and he lands a little way away. Steve takes this chance and sprints to the console, fidgeting around in his pocket to try and get the chip. He manages to initiate the release of the console with a code, and the platform of chips drops to meet him, but before he can fetch the chip from his pocket, Bucky is back, and he is forced instead to fend him off. 

They grapple, Bucky’s metal arm scraping the shield as he hits it and creating a high pitched keening which Steve grimaces through. He kicks Bucky, but Bucky blocks it. He punches him, blocked again. He should have known his friend would be this good. It makes the job all the more harder for him. When Steve then catches a punch aimed at him and holds onto Bucky's wrist, he tries to bring down the shield to fasten his grip, but Bucky uses his metal arm to hold onto it and then they are straining at a stalemate, Bucky holding a knife to Steve's arm, which holds his wrist, and his other arm holding the shield Steve uses his other hand to push against him. A complex stalemate then. 

They both strain, letting out groans of increasing frustration as they push against one another before Steve suddenly relinquishes his grip on Bucky’s hand holding the knife, using the element of surprise to withdraw himself completely from Bucky's ironclad grip and aim a strong kick straight at his chest, which _hits._ He is sent stumbling backwards, and finally Steve heads back to the console, yanking the chip that needs replacing out of its socket in the tray and opening the pouch sitting on his waistline where the other chip sits. But when he turns round, Bucky is back again, and he is forced to block the blow of his metal arm with his shield again, rendering the attempt to switch the chips virtually futile. However, Bucky's hand stays in the shield where he hit it, so Steve uses it to push him backwards and backwards until _wham_ he releases him in the circular outskirts surrounding the console. 

Now on the cylindrical platform in the centre of the dome with Bucky, Steve swings more blows of his shield left and right, to which Bucky ducks and dodges to avoid, using his hand to hit the shield and creating sparks between them.

And then, in a moment of utter rage and exasperation, Bucky runs at Steve and pushes him and them both over the edge of the railing of this metal platform, and below, to the smooth plates of machinery at the base of the console. Steve loses his shield in the fall, and lands with a sickening crunch on this new surface that makes his bones ache, but he gets up anyway. However, in the fall, the chip in his hand had escaped and gone falling down the slope they had landed on, slipping further and further down until now it topples precariously on the edge, ready to fall any second.

Steve and Bucky run at each other, and with no shield to protect him this time, the punches hit Steve at every strike. When a particularly sharp blow sends Steve falling down the slope, he grabs at the chip on his way down, to which Bucky follows him. Now on the very edge of this slope, below which is the great upside down glass dome, the two battle again, each just trying to beat the other. But then the chip in Steve’s hand falls down into the dome’s abyss, and his heart sinks the further it gets from the console. Because the further it gets, the harder his job gets too.

Resigned to the fact that he now has to follow the chip down, Steve takes a great kick at Bucky, who goes down into the dome, and then jumps down after him as fast as he can, desperate to get to the chip first.

* * *

Back to the Triskelion on the top floor, Natasha is having, what you could say is an _easier_ time at her job. The screen in front of her blinks triumphantly, displaying _TRANSFER COMPLETE_ in great blue and white letters. 

“Done.” she confirms. The device in her hand beeps and she looks down. “Oh, and it's trending.” she says matter-of-factly, but smiling sarcastically.

Pierce suspiciously says nothing, but looks round to councilmember Singh at the exact same time that a hole in his left chest opens up and crackles as it burns. Singh screams in pain, and both Natasha and Fury look round in alarm at the sound to see more councilmembers around them succumbing to the same fate at the click of a button that Pierce operates on his phone. Natasha whips back around and lifts the gun to Pierce’s gun threateningly, but he interrupts her before she speaks. 

“Unless you want a two inch hole in your sternum, I'd put that gun down.” he says coolly, holding the phone out in front of him like a weapon. Natasha pauses, uncomprehending. “That was armed the moment you pinned it on.” he says, gesturing to Natasha’s chest, and then it hits her.

She looks around at the council members and their wounds, all emanating from the same place in their chest, the place where they had put the pin. Dread fills her as the pin on her own chest becomes the most noticeable thing in the room. Preeminent and dangerous. The possible cause of her death. 

Reluctantly, her and Fury both lower their weapons.

* * *

The glass dome sitting in the belly of helicarrier three, Charlie, holds against the weight of the men inside, who are grappling it out inside the glass. Now both running around the large curved interior of the glass dome, the console and place to put the chip seems miles away to Steve. He sees the chip lying in a sector quite far away from him, and escapes Bucky just long enough to run to it. But then his own shield hits him flat in the back and he goes tumbling to the ground with an exclamation of pain. Bucky jumps to his feet and holds up his gun, but Steve grabs his shield and holds it up against the bullets fired at him.

And yet still, when he throws the shield at Bucky, he just bats it away from him like it’s an irritating fly, and advances towards Steve instead with his knife. For the first couple blows, Steve successfully dodges away, but then decides to block the next blow by catching Bucky’s wrist in one hand and then his other wrist in the other. What Steve fails to realise though, is that this then renders him defenceless, and in response, Bucky plunges his knife straight down into Steve’s right shoulder. Steve yells out in pain as the area around the stab wound flares up, and agony pierces him almost as hard as the knife had. Steve furiously headbutts Bucky once and then twice to get him away from him, which works, and Steve careers clumsily to the side, bending into a crouch around his wound. Bracing himself, he wrenches the knife from his body, which is almost as painful as the stab itself, and throws it aside. 

He then runs back in alarm to Bucky, who is reaching desperately for the chip and actually manages to grab it, and lifts him into the air with the strength of his super soldier muscles. He holds Bucky there, choking with a hand around his neck, before he throws him backwards to the glass with a deafening thud. Steve doesn't let go, one arm wrapped tight around Bucky's metal arm, and with the other hand he pushes his palm against Bucky's face, stretching his neck farther and farther. Despite this, Bucky still clutches the chip in his fist tightly.

“Drop it! Drop it!” Steve cries against Bucky’s flailing arms, but he refuses. Fighting the fatigue, and the pain and nausea, and the aching that wrecks even Steve’s superhuman body, Steve uses his grip on Bucky's arm to shove it the opposite way, and the bone gives a loud crack, eliciting a broken scream from Bucky’s throat that actually tears a little at Steve. But Bucky _still doesn't let go._

Steve pulls Bucky down to the ground where he adjusts his grip around Bucky’s neck, fastening him in a headlock so tight it hurts even Steve to execute it. He struggles against Steve, writhing in his arms in an attempt to escape the chokehold. But he fails, and Steve uses his other free hand to grasp Bucky’s metal arm by the hand and prise it down, down to his side, where it renders him helpless. He secures the arm to Bucky's side by pinning a leg down on it and then focuses on pulling at Bucky’s head in his arms harder and harder. Bucky continues to struggle, but weaker this time, and his cheeks get redder and redder, his face gradually turning purple, until his legs suddenly fall still and he stops. The chip falls from his hand.

Steve throws Bucky aside to get to the chip and swipes it from the ground in such a haste he almost trips. Then, leaving Bucky motionless on the glass floor, he runs as fast as he can up to where he can board the platform again, and finally reach the console.

* * *

Back up in the council, Fury and Natasha stand helpless as they watch Pierce communicate with his team and try to succeed in linking the helicarriers and killing millions.

“Lieutenant, how much longer?” 

Over the radio, Natasha hears the HYDRA agent answer, “Sixty-five seconds to satellite link. Targeting grid engaged. Lowering weapons array now.”

Up in the control room, Maria looks anxiously at the screen in front of her, which counts down every second to the completed launch. She speaks to Steve in her intercom. “One minute.”

High up in the dome inside helicarrier Charlie, Steve swings up onto the metal slope he and Bucky had fought on previously and runs back up it, but then a shot goes off and pain stabs at the back of Steve’s left thigh. He falls down with a shout, turning on his stomach to see the gunshot wound that lies deep in his upper thigh. The pain is almost blinding, but he has no choice but to ignore it. He sees Bucky in the dome where he had left him, now standing up and holding his gun up towards Steve. Steve gets back up desperately and jumps up the cylindrical wall of the console, clambering up it as fast as he can, but then _bam_ , another shot goes off and this time Steve’s right shoulder explodes with pain. Fighting instant unconsciousness, he pulls himself with all his might up and over the side of the platform, rolling under the railings and onto it as exhaustion comes in waves over him. He pauses, and then scrambles to his feet, now on the platform surrounding the console, so _close_ , and limps, disabled, towards the centre, hunched over his copious wounds.

In his com, Maria shouts. “Thirty seconds, Cap!”

Finally, finally, he makes it to the console, gasping against the pain that threatens to overcome him and bracing himself for another shot that he expects to come any second now. He fetches the chip from the pouch he had crammed it in earlier after snatching it off Bucky, and reaches up trembling to put it in the gap left for it, but then _BAM_ his back arches and he falls as the bullet he had been expecting shoots through him once and then again out the other side. When originally it had pierced his back, a hole in the front of his stomach opens when the bullet exits, and now his pain is doubled, tripled, quadrupled so much that it is impossible to ignore. He falls and rolls onto his back, gasping and panting for air that refuses to enter his lungs. In his hand, the chip still lies tightly enclosed. Dazed and confused, Steve looks down to the deep wound in his stomach, and the dark blood slowly staining his suit in a growing, spreading circle of pain and soon enough, death.

* * *

Up above Washington DC, the helicarriers rise further into the air, towering over the city like omens of death. Which, of course, they are. 

“We've reached three thousand feet. Sat link coming online now.” the HYDRA operators on the bridge speak, and collectively, fear and horror rises in Maria who watches, and Sam who hears, Natasha and Fury who see, and Steve who gulps for air that will not come.

“Deploy algorithm.” the order sounds.

“Algorithm deployed.”

And up above earth, all the way in space, satellites turn slowly and steadily towards the United States, the first target of the elimination of many millions of lives. 

Over radio, Pierce gives the all clear. “We are go to target.” 

And on screens everywhere, targets are labelled with tiny red dots, varying… _everywhere_.

The swarms of red dots accumulate from Washington Parks, where a boy plays with his father, the White house, where dozens of officials meet to govern, the Pentagon, where innocent people do their daily business, and to Stark Tower, where an A now sits on the outside, and Tony Stark works on the inside, unaware that his life may be about to end. These places, and so many more, all accumulating targets to kill.

The numbers on the screens of the targets acquired rise higher and higher, surpassing 100,000, then 200,000. 500,000 all the way up to over _700,000_ people.

“Target saturation reached. All targets assigned.”

“Fire when ready.”

“Firing in three…”

Steve inhales raggedly and desperately, rolling to his side and dragging himself to his knees.

“Two…”

He scrambles higher and higher to the console, the chip warm and sweaty in his quivering hand.

“One..”

He reaches up to the console, stifling a yell at the exertion, and _beep_ the chip clicks in. 

It fits. He did it.

The screens go blank, the targets are lost.

“Charlie locked.” he gasps into his intercom.

The confused HYDRA operators stare dumbfounded at the screens as Maria finally begins to work on her part of the mission, redirecting the destructive guns on the helicarriers around to themselves. “Okay, Cap, get out of there.” she tells Steve in the intercom.

But Steve is immobile, and accepts his defeat just as an honorable man should. “Fire now.” he says determinedly into his intercom.

“But Steve-” 

“Do it!” he yells with all the might he has left. “Do it now!”

And so she does. And the helicarriers shake with the force of the blows they shoot at each other, and the heat of the explosions fills the ship. In the dome where Steve lies, it is hottest of all, the blood seeping from all three of his gunshot wounds, singular stab wound and so many more injuries, coating him in thick, warm blood. And yet _still_ , he pulls himself to a half-standing position with use of the railings around the platform surrounding the console. He is thrown about as the explosions wreck the ship he is on and the sounds fill his ears, deafening sounds of clashing metal on metal.

Around him, the glass dome is attacked in the onslaught and shatters, great gaping holes appearing in the large metal operating systems that surround him, and it's all Steve can do just to hold on as everything falls apart around him. The metal contraptions break and fall, but over the sound of them hitting the ground, Steve hears screaming.

Over the side of the railing, he looks down to see Bucky trapped under a ridiculously large piece of metal that towers him and crushes his entire body with the exception of his head. He shouts from under it, and again, Steve physically cannot ignore the sound. He is still his friend. This is what he came to do.

* * *

On the top floor of the Triskelion, Pierce looks disappointedly on at the destruction of the helicarriers that can be seen out of the window. Natasha's heart thumps an irregular rhythm against her chest in anguish, unknowing of whether Steve made it out, or where he or Sam even are. She knows nothing, and it's killing her. 

“Are you still on the fence about Rogers' chances?” she says to Pierce, because although he may have succeeded, his chances of survival are a whole other matter.

“Time to go, Councilwoman. This way, come on. You're gonna fly me out of here.” Pierce says to Natasha, ignoring her, and gesturing for her to come with him. 

As they cross the room, Fury speaks up, his back to them. “You know, there was a time I would have taken a bullet for you.” he says bitterly. At that moment, a plan begins forming in Natasha’s head.

“You already did. You will again when it's useful.” Pierce says smugly. While Pierce is distracted talking to Fury, Natasha reaches from inside her jacket pocket for a Widow Bite and, gritting her teeth to prepare, activates it in her own hand. 

She does, and the electricity pulsates through her, blasting her vision a white blue and frying what feels like every single muscle, bone and individual part of her. But it also does what she wants it to, and disables the death pin on her chest.

Instantly, Natasha falls to the ground, her head a messy, agonzing whirlwind, and she falls unconscious. Pierce looks down in shock at her body and confusion at the device in his hand, but then a gun cocks in front of him and he looks up.

Fury shoots him in the chest once, and then again, sending him backwards through the glass computer pane. He rolls slowly onto his back, where the blood spreads slowly across his shirt.

Across the floor, Fury kneels down desperately next to Natasha. “Romanoff!” he whispers frantically. “Natasha!”

But Natasha does not move. He moves closer, shaking her and speaking louder. “Natasha, come on!” 

Slowly, reluctantly, he sees her eyelids flicker and scrunch up once before gradually opening. Her body feels like it's been slugged heavily with a twenty-pound club. Well, she has just been electrified, after all.

She looks up at Nick, still groggy. “Ow. Those really do sting.”

* * *

The sky is a scene of utter and complete destruction. The three helicarriers sway, tilted, high in the sky, more pockets of tiny explosions dotting their sides every passing second. The sound is deafening, and the air surrounding them fills with thick dark smoke that billows over central DC. Everything is up in flames, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets. The second highest helicarrier, Alpha’s, propellers are struggling to hold the dying ship up, and then suddenly, they fail. The ship plummets - well, as fast as a hundred-million kilogram mega death machine can plummet - towards the helicarrier Bravo lying a little farther below it, and it's like the entire city below gasps and holds its breath. 

When the two collide, it's like nothing ever seen before. Everything is just clouds of smoke and flames and noise and falling metal debris, and it's just lucky the destruction of these helicarriers is happening over the Potomac river, because otherwise the whole of DC might as well be wiped out at the end of this. The great hunks of metal fold together, bending into one great mess of exploding machine, and then it begins to fall.

In the Triskelion, Pierce utters his final words, “Hail HYDRA.”, before he dies.

Both helicarriers fall together into the great Potomac river and the dam next to it that they had initially launched from. Water floods everywhere in monumental waves carrying the force of a freight train. They fill the great cavern in which they had been stored, cascading down towards the floor littered full of storage containers and mini machines, extra supplies and a few unlucky men that still remain in there. The mangled mess of helicarrier bends over the ridge between the Potomac and the dam before falling in, splashing into the huge layer of water already covering the flooded floor.

Now two helicarriers have crashed, and only one remains airborne.

* * *

In the one remaining helicarrier, Steve fights against his fatal wounds as metal structures cascade to the ground around him. He jumps from the metal balcony he had resided on and lands in the bottom of the dome, the same place where Bucky lies struggling under the metal construction crushing him.

Desperately holding his midriff as though if he did so, the blood might stay in, Steve hobbles over to Bucky under the rubble.

Just as he manages to wrap his arm around the pole, a huge jolt in the ship throws him backwards, and this ship, with both him and Bucky inside, gives out and begins to fall. This time, towards the Triskelion.

* * *

When it does hit the Triskelion, Sam is the first to see it. Mid-way through his fight with Rumlow on a random floor halfway up the tower, the shadow that comes over the side of the building casts a darkness over everything, the IN-O1 on the side of the ship glaring at him. He has seconds before it hits. And when it does, the entire floor on which they reside almost seems to instantly cave in on itself, creating a deafening grinding noise as the corner of the ship enters the building. As Sam runs through it, the destruction hot on his heels, he yells for Romanoff into his com. 

“ _Please, tell me you got that chopper in the air!_ ”

Inside said chopper, having stripped of her councilwoman’s suit and revealed the Black Widow suit lying underneath, Natasha looks out of the back of the chopper window that Fury flies, at the scene of destruction before her, and of the ship that cuts into the building as smoothly and easily as a knife into butter. It's almost seamless. Over the noise, she yells back,

“Sam, where are you?”

“41st floor, north-west corner!” Sam cries as he slides under a falling column.

“We’re on it, stay where you are!” she shouts back.

“ _Not an option!_ ” 

The very floor underneath Sam begins to lift just as he reaches the window, and at the last second he jumps out as the helicarrier cuts clean through the building and out the other side. Sam hurtles out of the window into the air, and then plummets towards the ground. The helicopter below him has to swerve sharply to dart to beneath where he falls.

It turns on its side, and Natasha has to grab a hold of her seat so she doesn’t fall. But Sam falls, and he covers his head with his arms as _crash_ , he enters the helicopter, zooming straight past Natasha and slamming into the door on the other side. Natasha leaps forward to seize Sam’s shirt as the door he hit on the bottom side goes knocking off its hinges and into the green forests below and Sam almost goes with it. Natasha yanks Sam back with another hand clasped around his arm and he collapses on the floor of the chopper as Nick turns it back upright. 

“41st floor! 41st!” he roars at Fury, who snaps back,

“It's not like they put the floor numbers on the outside of the building!”

Natasha, however, is otherwise preoccupied. She looks in fear and horror at the collapsing building, her heart crying out for Steve, demanding to know where he is, to know that he is safe.

In desperation, she yells into her com, “Hill, where's Steve? You got a location on Rogers?”

But the helicopter soars away from the wreck of the Triskelion and the helicarrier impaling it, flying past and completely missing their target, Steve Rogers, lying in the broken wreck of the ship, fatally injured and threatened but still trying to save his frenemy from death.

As fire crackles and sparks fly around them, Steve pulls at the metal debris again, this time lifting it higher despite the torment of pain that overcomes his entire body. He screams at the effort, but at least the metal finally _lifts._

Bucky squirms out from under it with a grunt and Steve lets it fall back down with a gasp and a clang as metal hits metal.

Bucky gets to his feet, struggling to comprehend that his enemy has somehow saved his life. It messes with the complex he was given, the villainy he was ordered to commit.

Next to him, Steve growls. “You know me,” and the two straighten up to face each other.

“ _No I don’t!_ ” shouts Bucky, and he lashes out at Steve, aiming a blow at his head.

As the ship continues to fall past the Triskelion, Steve simply gets up again to face Bucky. “Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life.” Steve chokes out as blood fills his mouth from the countless blows.

Bucky’s eyes dart around, in confused anguish, anger and fury at what he _believes_ is deception. He lashes out again with a roar, but Steve does not retaliate. He does not fight back. He instead takes the punch which knocks him down again, as well as the rift in the ship as it cuts clean from the Triskelion and carries on further down the Potomac. 

Steve gets up.

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve enforces weakly.

“ _Shut up!_ ” Bucky wails and hits Steve _again_. This time, he goes slipping further towards the edge of this dome sitting in the underbelly of the ship, Bucky following him. 

Steve can barely get to his feet this time, and he wrenches his helmet off his head in a last ditch effort. _Please, he_ has _to recognise me._

The two of them stand breathless in this descending ship, fury mixed with bewilderment raging in Bucky, and pure desperation mixed with dwindling hope flowing in Steve. He knows he can’t say anything more that would affect him, but he still refuses to give up.

“I’m not gonna fight you. You’re my friend.” he says, and the shield in his hand drops, clangs on the metal, and goes falling through a gap between two poles. Steve doesn't know if he will see it again. Then again, he doesn't know if he will see anything again after this. _Natasha_ , his brain screams, but if he thinks of her he will break, he will weaken and then he will surely die. So he cannot think of her. Not yet.

But then Bucky is taking a running jump at him, and his arms go wrapping around Steve’s stomach, which howls at the pain from the gunshot wound. The two go careering right to the edge of the now shattered dome, where Bucky throws Steve down on his back. His head lolls back over the side as Bucky towers over him, pinning him down.

“You’re my mission.” he hisses, and then smacks Steve once with his metal fist, and then again, and again, and Steve has never felt so much pain in his life. He wants it to end, because anything has to be better than the pure torture that becomes his body now. New cuts open on Steve’s face, bruises swell instantly as Bucky keeps going and going, tearing Steve’s face to shreds in punch after punch. He cries out as he hits him, the terror in his brain manifesting as anger which he takes out on Steve.

And then Bucky pauses, his arm raises, and Steve sees the littlest hint of doubt in his eyes. 

Battling the darkness that pulls at his vision, begging to pull him under, he opens his mouth.

“Then finish it,” he says. “Because I'm with you till the end of the line.”

And that’s it. His last hope. And despair tugs at Steve, closing his throat with emotion and filling his eyes with tears because _all he wanted was his friend back_. And he tried, he really did. And now he wants to go home.

The doubt in Bucky’s eyes flickers at the line Steve had quoted back to him, growing into something that seems to break the facade inside of him, if only slightly. He stares at Steve in terror and disgust, but Steve also sees the tiniest bit of his old friend Bucky in there, and that part looks at himself and what he has done in utter horror. The hand raised to attack Steve again falters, and falls, and his grip on Steve’s suit tightens as if to ground him to this world.

But then tragedy strikes, and a huge structure of metal falls from above, and hits the bottom of the glass dome in which they lay, and shatters it, and suddenly Steve is gone, and Bucky is left holding on for dear life to one solitaire pole of metal as he watches him fall.

The way down is long, but it doesn't feel it. Steve doesn't feel anything. He just falls. Joined by metal debris from the helicarrier, he makes his way towards the river that runs below them, already filled with broken metal and rubble from the ships.

When he finally hits the water, it feels like a prudent end to a long and rather destructive journey. Here, even surrounded by falling pieces of metal debris, it is quiet, and the water sweeps him into the current as he sinks lower and lower beneath the surface.

For a moment there, he thought he had his friend back. And perhaps he did, but now he will never know.

The cold water around him contrasts the warm blood leaving him, staining the blue water red, but soon even that stops too.

The deeper he goes, the less debris reaches him, and soon it is just him, in this endless blue abyss of water.

He doesn't register inhaling the water, or the sting as his lungs fill with the stuff, or the urge to cough that manifests itself in his chest.

He doesn't register any of it. All he registers is the colour red... or perhaps orange? It fills his vision, which can't really be his vision, and takes on the texture of… it takes a moment for Steve to place it. _Hair_. 

In his time of need, she has come to him, in his dreams, and now it is with pleasure to which Steve sinks into this blissful oblivion to meet what he thinks is Natasha.

And it is with bliss that he doesn't see the arm reaching through the water, and grasping his arm, pulling him up towards the surface.

And Steve is still unconscious as he surfaces and is carried to shore by a metal arm, unknowing of his rescue.

His eyes are still closed and he lies motion as Bucky’s face looks down at him and the water begins to slowly spill in small surges from Steve’s mouth.

Steve still believes he is dead when Bucky leaves him washed up on the shore for someone else to find, because he knows no different.

And when Natasha finds him mere minutes later, a screaming mess calling for help and pleading for Steve to ‘please not be dead’, Steve still thinks he’s in heaven.

So that’s where he stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, definitely my longest chapter. I could have split the final battle into two chapters but I wanted to save chapter 26 because the number has a special meaning to Steve and Nat and there's gonna be a lot of them next chapter so that's why this one is so long. Also the date will be 09/26 too so that's cool. You'll understand in the next chapter don't worry.  
> I swear a lost the will to live so many times writing this chapter there was just SO MUCH FIGHTING!  
> I fully debated just saying: they fought, da chip fell in da hole, Natasha got buzzed, Steve said some emotional shizz, the end. But no I went and wrote a 9000 word chapter instead.  
> I hope you all enjoy anyway!
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review!
> 
> if you see me incorrectly typing Bucky as Bucket… no you didn't.


	26. I Didn't Know If You'd Care If I Came Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many regrets... I'm just gonna let you guys read and then explain at the end because pHeW chile I'm dead...  
> Also this where we really sort of delve into au stuff because they don't really show Steve’s recovery a lot in the movie and also I need to clear a lot of stuff up before the graveyard scene in the next chapter. Natasha's going thru some shit too so we gotta address that first.  
> I have actually written the next chapter that comes after this because originally they were one chapter (hence why this is one is so short) but I decided to split them up so the next one should be up pretty soon actually.

this is me trying - Taylor Swift

LOCATION(S): BPCH HOSPITAL, 38.8931° N, 76.9957° W, NATIONAL MALL PARK, 38.8875° N, 77.0364° W  
DATE(S): 09/26/2014 (oop) - 10/02/2014 

Time is meaningless in this endless oblivion in which Steve floats. He is clueless, confused and unknowing, but yet he does nothing to correct it as he drifts through this abyss. This emptiness, that almost feels like water, but can't be, because the one memory he faintly recalls is surfacing water, _leaving_ it. And yet he floats as if deep, deep below the surface.

It’s a curious perception of nothingness that he senses, something he can neither place or register. Something that fills him and yet still surrounds him, something that becomes his entire being and yet defies it’s very existence. Without this unplaceable state he lives in, he is nothing. It becomes him, and yet is a side piece in a chess game that his brain is constantly playing.

At some points, things are clearer, and colours begin to leak through his eyelids, and physicality is so close to almost returning to him, but then he sinks again, is sucked back into this world of nothingness, and it is gone. Any sense of a life he used to have. Initially he would regret it, but the closer he gets to the surface of this life and closer to a world he used to know, the more pain there is. And so he involuntarily shys from it, glad to be sucked back into this bottomless pit where nothing can reach him. But he still misses it.

For he doesn't know how long, he swims here in this unfathomable void in which all he knows is confusion and something so unfeasibly large it is impossible to even conceive or name. And time loses meaning, not that it ever had any, and this world is like something he has never experienced before. He can't decide whether he wants to leave it, because he is unknowing of what the world beyond it held. 

And then one day, it all changes. Something yanks him up higher, further than he has ever ventured before and carries him upwards and upwards until in all one moment, _bam! Everything is back_. He can feel things, the material under his fingers and the softness he sits on, and he can hear, and smell, and remember and _everything!_ Well, almost. Things are still a little fuzzy around the edges, and he struggles to recall many memories..

At first, Steve lies there shocked. For who knows how long, he has been floating in this weird place where he couldn't recall anything, and wasn't even sure if he had a body, and now it’s all back, and he actually _has a body_. Steve doesn't open his eyes at first, dazed shock still occupying most, if not all, of his mind, and relies on his other senses to gather information.

The first thing he registers is a quiet snuffling, that almost sounds like an animal. His ears strain, struggling in the lack of use, to hone in and identify the sound, and as sense gradually comes back to Steve, he recognizes it as _crying_. The hitched gasps and sporadic almost silent sobs of a human being like himself. It’s coming from his left, but all the information comes so slowly back to Steve that he doesn't really have any clue how to act on it. So he doesn't, and he just listens to the sound of the desperate whimpering as it carries on, and the longer it goes, the more he can register other sensations. Something warm is around his left hand, the side where the crying is coming from. It squeezes his hand tight and after a while he realises that the squeezes fall in time with the sobs, every new round earning a fresh squeeze of Steve’s hand. _It's a hand,_ a distant part of him shouts, but his brain is getting fuzzy again, and with horror he feels himself slipping again, falling back down into the abyss and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. And then he’s gone.

The next time Steve appears at the surface, things are clearer, if only by a little, and his eyes feel alert and ready to open. He lies still for a few seconds, just collecting his new surroundings, waiting for sense to come back to him and trying to judge how long it has been since his last arrival at the surface. Then he opens his eyes.

At first he recoils against the harsh light that attacks him, blinking in place until his eyes slowly start to focus. The first thing he registers is the bed he lies in. Clearly in a hospital, the sheets are clean and white on the bed in the centre of a room full of medical equipment. Steve lies facing the door, in which blinds drop down to cover the glass panel in the door, the same as the large windows either side of it. Around him is a couple of uncomfortable, hospital mandated armchairs accompanied by several bags strewn on the floor and on surfaces. There is clear evidence of someone beside him living here, and when Steve turns to his other side, he sees exactly who it is.

Natasha sits slumped over on a hard plastic chair beside the bed, her entire body leant over and her head lying on the bed next to Steve. Her shoulder-length red hair covers most of her face, tilted slightly to the side, and it is clear even from first glance that she is fast asleep. Her arms form a cross under the head lying on top of them, acting as a cushion, and Steve can see her back moving steadily up and down as she breathes.

His heart feels like it’s going a mile a minute because he realises that she must have not left Steve’s side once since he was brought in, at whatever time she did. Steve can see evidence of this through the old clothes and Black Widow suit littered across the floor and over the back of chairs, as well as old empty paper plates of food and a phone that sits not far from her sleeping body, obviously put down just before she drifted off.

Judging from the light flooding in through a window behind him, it’s daylight, but Natasha is obviously so exhausted having not left Steve for a moment that she has forgotten to sleep. It touches Steve so deeply that it almost eclipses that pain that is slowly ebbing back every passing second.

As he tries to ignore the pain, his heart begs to reach out and touch her, to let her know that he is awake and wants to see her, but suddenly he can't move, no matter how much he wants to. Pain has paralyzed him, inching up to infect his brain from the wounds in his stomach, and his back, and his left leg, and his left arm, and his aching face, and it comes in unrelenting waves, forcing Steve to scrunch his eyes up against it. Faintly, in his hand, he feels a pain pump, something he recognises from what seems like long ago, and instinctively knows that he has to press it. So he does, and after a few seconds blissful relief floods his bloodstream and slowly pushes the pain away. But as it pushes the pain away, it also pushes away consciousness, something Steve hadn't realised, and regret fills him just as fast as the pain medication had. 

But now it’s too late, and he is going again, being snatched into that world of terrifying unknowing and nothingness, and he can’t stop it.

At least the pain is gone.

* * *

There is something different about the next time Steve wakes, and as he drifts back up to the surface for what seems like the millionth time, it takes him a while to place it. But when he reaches the top, he realises. This time, he is fully there. There is no pain, or pain medication fogging his reality or clogging his senses. Everything is sharper and clearer, and with a great amount of relief, Steve begins to open his eyes.

Music is the first thing to greet him this time. Smooth and upbeat, it echoes through the room and almost immediately lifts Steve’s spirits. Steve doesn't recognise it, but it's the Trouble Man soundtrack that Sam had told him to listen to the first time they met, and it’s coming from an IPod standing next to Steve’s bed.

This time, when he turns, he sees Sam instead of Natasha in a straight-backed seat facing the room, reading a magazine that sits in his lap and looking quite content. Steve can see him gently bobbing along to the music. He has a few cuts and bruises on his face, mostly scarred over, so Steve hates to imagine what his own face looks like.

He turns his face back forward as the cuts and bruises ache, and speaks for the first time in what feels like years. 

“On your left.”

Sam looks up in mild surprise and smiles when he sees Steve fully conscious. He is relieved, like many, to see Steve finally awake. 

“Good to see you.” he says conversationally, as if the recent events just hadn’t happened.

Steve smiles weakly, trying to organize the jumble of questions racing themselves around his head. He decides on one. “How long was I out?” 

“Not that long. Everyone was expecting you to be down for a lot longer. Super soldier serum strength sped it up maybe.” Sam starts. Steve looks at him expectantly. “You were out for about a day, it's like four in the afternoon now. Friday twenty-sixth.”

Steve’s eyebrows raise. Even if time had no meaning in that bottomless abyss he had floated in, it had at least felt longer than a _day._ Looking back on it, it had felt like _at least_ a week, if not a month. But it had really just been a _day?_

Sam sees Steve’s shocked face. “Felt like longer, huh?”

Steve just nods numbly. There is a brief silence as Steve processes this fact.

“I should probably go and tell Natasha you’re awake, she’s been worrying.”

At the sound of her name, Steve whips back around. A bit too fast. He gets whiplash and grimaces. He speaks through his gritted teeth. “Is she here?”

“Dude, she’s never left. I’m pretty sure she’s in the canteen right now. She had a call to take.”

This fact just reinforces how Steve’s heart aches for Natasha. He had promised her he would come back, and he had, but she doesn’t know that yet. And he needs her to know. He needs her to know that he had done what she had told him to. He had come back.

* * *

In the canteen, Natasha lies half slumped over and exhausted at a small circular table with a singular seat, surrounded by crowds of people sitting at others just like it. 

She feels like she’s done nothing but cry since the very hour they brought Steve in yesterday and immediately sent him to emergency surgery. There, they had spent a total of at least 5 hours removing the bullets that had still stayed in his body as well as replacing the blood he had lost and patching up his bruised and damaged face. Then he had stayed in recovery for what felt like days as Natasha stayed with him, begging for him to wake up and fearing for his life. The doctors had no idea when he was going to wake up after this surgery due to the unpredictable nature of his super soldier serum, and they had said it could take anywhere from one day to one month. She didn't think she could stand it.

The experience had almost killed her, just as well as it had Steve. She had never cared so much, so intensely, all at one time. It had done her through and through, exhausting her heart and making her muscles heavy from the crying.

When Fury had called her, she had reluctantly left Steve’s bedside to take the call, knowing it would be something she did not want him to overhear if he gained consciousness. _If_ , because at this point it feels like he never will.

The all-consuming fear, the doubt, the desperation that all depended on Steve’s fate had eaten her up in the day passed since she had found him lying on the shore. She had never cared so deeply for anyone, felt this way ever, and quite frankly it scared the living daylights out of her. She had not realised just how much she had come to depend on this man, and him being alive. Suddenly the time they had had together was not enough for her, and she feels the need to be with him forever. She realises that no time with him could ever be enough, and that she loves him so _deeply_ , in such a way that she wouldn't know what to do with herself if she didn't have him there with her.

And as those thoughts circulate around her head, a different voice from the deep, dark place in the back of her brain creeps into the forefront. It hisses at her, an evil serpent in its intentions and its aim to destroy her, but Natasha can't help but listen to what it says.

_Love is weakness. It will make you vulnerable, Natalia. Once they have him, it will be too easy to lure you in, and then they will kill you both! Such an easy way to get you and your loverboy killed, child. You fool, for not thinking of it before! You cannot protect him from your past, and soon you yourself will destroy him as a result of what you have become. You are weak, child. You have no place in this world._

At first she tries to push the voice away, an instinct built against it after she left the Red Room and joined S.H.I.E.L.D, but there is still a part of her that wonders if it is true, and in her upset, sleep-deprived state of mind, that little part is enough, and she blindly accepts it.

She has let herself open up too much over the last couple of years, and has paid dearly for it. First she let Fury in, only for him to turn his back on her and treat her as the enemy and someone not to be trusted. He had faked his death in front of her rather than let her in on the secret. Then she had trusted S.H.I.E.L.D, and trusted that she was finally on the right track and on her way to making up for her past deeds, but it turns out that was all a lie, again. The more she lets herself open, the more she gets hurt. And suddenly it seems stupid to keep letting people in, and she has to cut them out, she has to do it now before anything else tragic and devastating happens to her or someone she cares about. She can't let her enemies know she has the capacity to care, to even love. She absolutely can’t. It is a vulnerability and is what they will use to target her first.

So she must cut them off. Both for their safety and hers. It isn’t a choice anymore, it’s simply a matter of survival. If you have feelings, you’re bound to get hurt.

And so with a great sigh, Natasha lifts her head from where it has been resting on the table, blinking a couple times at the harsh lights in the cafeteria. Beside the coffee cup she clutches desperately in her hand, the phone on the table vibrates conveniently just as she looks at it. Straightening up in her seat, she picks it up in her hands and looks at the screen. Her heart almost stops.

_Steve is awake. You should come, he’s asking for you. Sam_

All she can register in this whirlwind of emotions she is feeling right now, is that _Steve is awake._ He _woke up._ He’s okay, at least for now, and the huge weight Natasha hadn't even realised existed is released from her shoulders because he is _okay_. 

But then the epiphany in her brain from the last few minutes comes back to her and her heart sinks low, lower into the pit of her stomach, because she knows what she has to do now and she hates it. For now though, she can revel in the fact that Steve woke up.

She gets to her feet, leaves the coffee cup alone on the table and leaves the cafeteria to go and see Steve.

When Natasha arrives, he is sitting up in bed, talking to Sam, and when she enters his face lights up. Natasha can't help but smile at the reaction and his innocent delight, so without question she goes into his arms, embracing him carefully because of his injuries. He sits up to hug her, ignoring the protestation of his wounds. 

As he hugs her, Steve breathes her in, relishing the warm scent of her that he had missed so much. Sam takes his cue and gets up to leave. When he has left, Natasha takes a seat on the bed next to Steve, looking at him with a mixture of relief and conflict.

Steve’s eyes, however, are filled with love, and the pure intensity of it makes Natasha break a little more inside. Steve pulls Natasha to him and kisses her, and Natasha is too in love to pull away for any sake anyway. She leans into the kiss, desperate and longing, for she fears it may be one of their last. Leaning up to cup Steve’s face with her hand carefully to avoid the bruises and healing cuts, Natasha tries to display all in this one kiss just how much she loves him, adores him, needs him and cares for him. Whether it works, she doesn't know.

When they break apart, Natasha has to struggle to hold back more tears, but Steve sees them and takes her hand in his. 

“Hey, what’s up?” 

“Nothing, I’m just… I’m just glad you’re okay, that’s all.” she whispers, a little choked up. She reaches up a hand to his tufty hair and runs her hand through it, an old gesture she used to do whenever she was trying to hold herself together. Steve reaches up and takes her hand back in his, pulling it down level to his face and kissing it, all while squeezing it comfortingly as well. 

When Sam pops his head back in later to see how Steve is doing, he sees Natasha lying on the narrow hospital bed next to Steve, her back against his chest as she lies huddled against him. Steve lies on his side, his body curled around hers, an arm slung loosely over her side, and they both doze there peacefully, Natasha sniffling on occasion. Sam shares a quiet smile with himself and closes the door behind him.

* * *

It’s been almost a week since the incident of the helicarriers and the takedown of S.H.I.E.L.D, and the press are getting restless. Natasha is planning to do a conference for the government in Steve’s place soon, but it isn’t quite yet, and there is still stuff left to do. Steve’s face is healing spectacularly with the assistance of the super soldier serum, and it shouldn't be too long until he is fully back on his feet now. Instead of going to the newly-remodeled Avenger’s tower, Steve and Natasha both preferred the idea of going back to Steve’s old DC apartment to complete the rest of his recovery, with the benefit of it being mostly out of the public eye. And so, they moved back home there while the rest of the people who had been involved in the takedown of HYDRA followed their different paths: Agent 13/Kate joining the ranks of the C.I.A and outperforming all those in her class, Maria Hill taking a lie detector test in order to join Stark Industries and Nick Fury slipping back undercover after his presumed death, effectively erasing all traces of his existence. Known HYDRA leaders and associates are arrested on first sightings around the world, and in a distant hospital across the city, Rumlow is rescued from the wreck of the Triskelion, a mess of a man with third degree burns covering almost every inch of his body. 

It’s the day before the public government inquiry, and Natasha is taking Steve out on a walk because it’s ‘supposed to aid recovery’, but mostly she’s just using it as an excuse to talk. She was expecting this park they walk through to be packed with people and eventually press the longer they walk, but as dusk arrives and the sun begins to flicker down behind the tree line, more and more people start to leave, and there’s no sight of paparazzi anywhere. It's like they're invisible. And Natasha likes it that way.

As they walk, the air around them fills with that indescribable ambience that dusk brings to it, when it becomes dense and humid, and the quiet hum of insects like dragonflies and moths fills Steve and Natasha’s ears. The peacefulness contrasts the conflict that Natasha battles with inside her head. As they reach a small hill that slopes up to the treeline, she stops, and turns to face Steve. 

“Steve,” she starts, but then is stuck, as she has no way to continue. After a moment, she tries again. She takes a deep breath in, preparing herself.

“My past... The Red Room, the KGB, Stalingrad, the USSR, all of it…”

Steve nods uncomprehendingly. “What about it?” 

“Do you think… Do you ever worry…? I always worry, even now, even when I'm doing different things, I still worry that they'll come for me, and that they’ll get me… and it’ll be way too _easy_.”

Steve, previously having been listening sympathetically, now cocks his head in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘too easy’?”

“In the Red Room, they teach you...the usual drabble about... love.”

Steve looks at her wearily.

“Stuff like ‘Love is weakness, love is for children, love makes you vulnerable’, you know the stuff. Well… I'm worried that if they do come for me, and they do get to me, it’ll be too easy because… because I have people I have grown to care for… mainly you.”

Steve eyebrows furrow in disagreement, but he lets her speak. 

“They would get you and then they virtually have me in the bag, easy, done. Because they know I'd come for you. Because love has made me… weak.”

Steve tries to speak up then, defiant, but Natasha shushes him, staying insistent. “Letting people in means that the KGB and anyone who wants to lure me in also has an easy way in. They’d do anything to you… to the people I love, if it meant I would come. And I can't let that happen. They would hurt you, and hurt you bad. They wouldn't care about your life, hell, they'd probably kill you just to get me in their clutches. You don't deserve that. You deserve someone who isnt gonna get you killed just because they love you. You deserve… someone better than me. It doesn't matter how long we go… or how long it takes for them to get to me, I am always gonna pose this kind of threat to you. Just by loving you, I automatically endanger you. You deserve someone who doesn't do that to you, Steve…”

Steve finally speaks up defiantly, “No, I don't want that, Nat! I just want _you_! I know your past scares you, but that’s all it is: the _past_. Natasha, it doesn't matter what happens, we can take it, I can take it, we can do it together Nat.”

“Steve, look what happened here…” Natasha says, gesturing to Steve and his scars and disfigurements from the battle almost a week ago. “You almost _died_ …” Natasha whispers the word. “Everything was made so much harder just because of how much I love you… the whole time I was just worrying about you, and that can't happen. It could have jeopardized the mission, and then anything could have happened. We could have let millions of people die just because we love each other.”

Steve actually stays silent at this. Natasha is voicing the concerns he himself had worried about, all that time ago undercover in the mall, about how nothing could ever work between them because of their job, and how it could potentially ruin both of them as well as kill innocent lives. He hates to admit it but he can almost agree with her. Natasha continues.

“You have to try and find someone _better_ than me. Someone who doesn't pose a threat to you like I do. You have to be in a relationship that doesn't… _destroy_ things, just by _existing_!” Natasha’s voice breaks as she finishes, her throat closing slightly and she has to choke back the tears. Steve’s eyes are glistening too. 

“But I just want _you_ …” he says quietly, looking at her.

“But you have to admit, something between us, with a job like ours, it’s never going to _not_ attract trouble. It’s like a freaking magnet… it just always will. Won't it?” Natasha pleads with him to see the way she does, because she knows there is a part of him that agrees.

Steve’s silence is his answer. His gaze drops to the floor and he shuffles his feet a little to avoid looking at Natasha, because deep down he knows that she is right. In another world, perhaps they would be able to live peacefully in love and with each other, but this is not that world. 

After an emotional moment, even though it breaks Natasha to persist in it, she does.

“Steve, I’m going to leave. After the inquiry tomorrow, I’m leaving, and you can't follow me. You should take this chance to move on… and go and find someone you can give you what I can’t. God knows you deserve to be happy.”

At that moment, a tear slips from Natasha’s eyes, but she furiously wipes it away. 

“If you have to go…” Steve starts, his voice choked up too.

“I do.”

“Can you do one last thing for me? There’s someone I have to find.” Steve asks.

There is a silence as Natasha realises what he means. Bucky.

“You’re gonna go after him.” 

“I have to try and get him back.” Steve beseeches.

Natasha nods, understanding. If there is a chance to get his old friend back, Steve has to try. And she would still do for anything for Steve, even if she’s running.

“What do you need?”

“You have... connections.” Steve starts awkwardly, trying to refer to her past in the most delicate way possible. “I need his file, the one from when he was experimented on. It could be useful in…”

“...In trying to get him back.” Natasha finishes.

Steve nods.

“I’ll do what I can.” she smiles faintly.

Steve just looks at her, as if trying to drink her in, all of her, before she disappears. In response, Natasha opens her arms to him, Steve moves into them, and they both stand there still and entwined with each other, just _holding_ each other in a tight embrace. Because they can. Emotion clogs Natasha’s thoughts and all she can do is just hug him tight because _God_ she is going to miss him. _So much._ But she has to make sure he is safe first. That is her top priority. 

After a long, long moment, Natasha pulls away, and looks at Steve, their faces less than a foot apart. Then she touches her lips to his in a gentle kiss that leaves Steve’s heart aching for more. More that she doesn’t give him. 

Together, they walk home in silence, a rift that had not existed before opening between them. On either side of it, their hearts yearn for each other, but are denied each other by the brain. Two following the head and not the heart, and making a grave mistake in doing so.

Even if Steve does not agree with Natasha’s reasoning and her logic, he respects her and her fears about the past following her enough not to challenge them, but secretly hopes as they walk home that sometime in the future, Natasha will change her mind and come round to Steve’s way of thinking. Which is, that it is too much to deny what they have with each other over the fear of something bad happening. 

Because yes, maybe one day someone _will_ come for them, and use one of them as leverage for the other, but to spend your whole life living on ‘maybe’s, isn't even really living at all. To let the possibility of something happening rule your life is to trap yourself in a box with no exits, and Steve hopes that Natasha will realise that. 

Because otherwise, well, they are well and truly lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boi, I hate myself for this chapter just as much as you do, I promise.  
> Man, this chapter…  
> So, I know they break up (kind of), but there IS a reason. They do this so that in Age of Ultron Natasha dates Bruce (ew) and CAN ACTUALLY REALISE THAT SHE MADE A MISTAKE by running and ditching Steve. Of course, by that time… things have changed for Steve.  
> But, THIS WILL ALL BE WORTH IT IN THE END, I PROMISE.  
> I'm so sorry for this, but it will make sense in the end I promise.  
> ROMANOGERS WILL RETURN
> 
> funny sidenote:  
> I'M CACKLING - THE 26TH SEPT (date of this chapter) WAS SUPPOSED TO BE STEVE AND NAT’S SON’S BIRTHDAY IN THE FUTURE BUT I LOOKED IT UP AND IT'S ALSO CELEBRATED AS WORLD CONTRACEPTION DAY! THE IRONY HAS ME DEAD I’M-


	27. The Rain Is Always Gonna Come If You're Standing With Me - Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue and last chapter of part 1...  
> Fully cried writing this by the way, disclaimer…  
> I have loved every second of this journey and I cannot wait for the next book.
> 
> ENJOY!

peace - Taylor Swift

LOCATION(S): CAPITOL HILL, 38.8860° N, 76.9995° W, GLENWOOD CEMETERY 38.9231° N, 77.0058° W  
DATE(S): 10/03/2014, 10/04/2014

“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” the bailiff asks as Natasha places her hand on the Bible. 

“I do.”

She then takes her seat and the head of a huge circular table,the other end of which sits a large group of pompous looking high up government officials. After a brief shuffling of papers and muttered conversations, the room settles, and the governor sitting directly across from Natasha speaks.

“Why haven't we yet heard from Captain Rogers?” 

Natasha hesitates, trying to find the right words to describe her point without blatantly mouthing off the people in front of her. Around her, the countless members of the press snap pictures and scrawl down notes. Not that there’s anything to say, she’s literally just sitting here with her arms crossed.

“I don't know... what there is left left for him to _say_. I think the wreck in the middle of the Potomac made his point fairly eloquently.” she says in a deliberately controlled manner.

“Well, he could explain how this country's expected to maintain its national security now that he _and you_ have laid waste to our intelligence apparatus.” the general sneers back at her.

Natasha almost rolls her eyes. The pure stupidity of these people astounds her. “HYDRA was selling you _lies_ , not intelligence…!”

“Many of which _you_ seem to have had a personal hand in telling.” the governor continues to ridicule her. Fury bubbles in Natasha and she purses her lips impatiently to stop from swearing at him. 

Then, a man to the left of the general speaks.

“Agent, you should know that there are some on this committee who feel, given your service record, both _for_ this country and against it, that you belong in a _penitentiary_ , not mouthing off on Capitol Hill.”

Natasha’s eyes narrow incredulously, but her stomach had dropped when they had mentioned her record. She knew, when releasing all those S.H.I.E.L.D/HYDRA secrets on the top floor of the Triskelion, that her past would get out in this manner, but it still doesn't make it any easier to deal with. 

These people still seem to be missing the point though, so it seems she will have to explain it to them like children. Stifling a smirk, she speaks coolly.

“You’re not gonna put me in a prison. You're not gonna put _any_ of us in a prison.” she says, pausing. “You know why?”

“Do enlighten us.” the governor drawls patronizingly. 

“Because you need us.” Natasha says simply, and goes to elaborate. “Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we helped make it that way. But we're also the ones best qualified to defend it... So if you want to arrest me, arrest me. You'll know where to find me.” she stifles her smile.

The governors sit dumbfounded, as Natasha proceeds to get to her feet, and then turns and leaves the inquiry, the press clamouring after her the whole way out. It's the most eloquent fat middle finger that she can successfully manage to give them without getting her rep even more ruined than it is, and she loves it.

Across town, during the government inquiry that Natasha strutted out of, Fury burns the last remnants of his existence, watching his beloved eyepatch as it sets on fire, and melts and sizzles to dust in the flames. Then, sunglasses, hoodie and all, he turns his back on it and walks away.

The next time they see each other, Fury, Natasha, Sam and Steve, is in a church graveyard the very next day. 

Sam and Steve arrive first, standing before the grave in question and looking down at it a little nostalgically. Fury appears from behind them.

“So, you've experienced this sort of thing before?” he aims at Steve, looking down at the white marble stone surrounded by white flowers and a mini US flag. On the grave reads, 

_Col. Nicholas J. Fury, "The path of the righteous man. Ezekiel 25:17”_

“You get used to it.” Steve assures Nick. After a moment, Nick speaks up again.

“We've been data-mining HYDRA's files. Looks like a lot of rats didn't go down with the ship.” he says, and disappointment sinks in Steve. He should have seen this coming. They'd be fighting the fallouts of this takedown for years to come - HYDRA’s outreach was far too wide. “I'm headed to Europe tonight, wanted to ask if you'd come.”

Steve shakes his head sadly. “There’s something I gotta do first.”

Nick nods approvingly, and turns to Sam standing next to Steve. “How about you, Wilson? Could use a man with your abilities.” 

Sam takes a long look at Steve before answering.

“I’m more of a soldier than a spy.”

 _That may be an unfair judgement,_ Steve thinks. _The two might work well together better than you’d think._

Fury nods. “Alright then.” He shakes both Sam and Steve’s hands and gestures to the grave. “Anybody asks for me, tell them they can find me right here.”  
And then he’s gone.

From the other end of the graveyard comes a voice that strikes first joy in Steve’s heart, and then almost immediately sadness, following their last encounter in the park.

“You should be honoured, that's about as close as he gets to saying thank you.”

Steve and Sam turn to see Natasha walking towards them, a thin package under her arm. Steve walks to her and they meet in the middle.

“Not going with him?” Steve says, as he had initially assumed she would leave abroad with Fury when she had told him she would be leaving.

Natasha shakes her head, smiling. “Nooo.”

“Not staying here.” he assumes.

She looks away, her smile fading, and says nothing for a moment. “I blew all my covers, I gotta go figure out a new one.”

 _So_ that’s _what she’s doing,_ Steve thinks.

“That might take a while.” he says slightly sadly.

“I’m counting on it.” she says, looking at him, and Steve’s heart sinks. She isn't going to be back for a long time.

After a moment, she speaks up again. “That thing you asked for, I called in a few favours from Kiev.” And from under her arm she pulls the thin package she had been carrying earlier and hands it to Steve.

It’s the file he had asked for last night, with "дело No 17" plastered in thick black letters across the front. 

“Will you do me a favour? Call that nurse?”

Steve looks back up at Natasha. She’s really pushing him to move on. An echo in Steve’s head doubts that she ever cared at all, but he tries not to listen to it.

“She’s not a nurse.” he says simply.

“And you're not a S.H.I.E.L.D agent.” Natasha counters.

Steve can’t help but smile at Natasha, even if it breaks him. She’s just so beautiful.

“What was her name again?”

“Sharon.” Natasha answers, and this time it’s her heart that falls through her stomach. It’s going to be a hard few months.

She plasters a smile back on her face and looks up at Steve. “She’s nice.” she says encouragingly.

And then look at each other, and Natasha just tries to _see_ him, to burn the image of him into her head, the slope of his features and his eyes that she feels she could stare into the rest of eternity, if given the option. This is their last goodbye.

Painfully aware of Sam’s presence behind them, Natasha steps forward and on her tiptoes, kisses Steve on the cheek. He looks at her intensely, trying to communicate all the words that he never said. The ones lost in translation, the ones lost on the way to his lips.

He could never say all these words, but hopes she knows anyway.  
And she does.

But then her hand on his shoulder is gone, and she’s moving away, walking away. At the last minute, she turns to him, her gaze just as intense as his.

“Be careful, Steve. You might not want to pull on that thread.” she nods to the folder in Steve’s hand.

And then she is walking away, and Steve is rooted into the ground, frozen despite the frantic screaming and desperate reaching of his mind. It’s too late though. 

She is gone. 

His eyes fall down in devastation, and land on the folder sitting in his hands, which he opens. A small handwritten note falls out, which he catches in his hands, looking at the rest of the contents of the folder first before turning to it.

Filling the first left page is a large picture of Bucky frozen in blue ice in an incubator, his eyes closed and face still. In the bottom corner is a small headshot of Bucky in his war days, young and devilishly handsome. From behind him, Sam speaks up.

“You’re going after him?”

“You don't have to come with me.” Steve points out.

“I know.” Sam states. “When do we start?”

As the two of them leave the graveyard, Steve absentmindedly crams the forgotten note that had fallen out of the folder deep into his pocket. There, it lies forgotten for a long time, until months later, when Steve puts on those jeans to go on a trip to Borneo, and finds it scrunched up inside.

When he does unfold it, it reads,

_Tomorrow is never promised, but with you, it was okay, because today lasted forever. Thank you. Love, Nat._

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not crying, you're crying. 
> 
> Okay... that is the end of Book 2 covering CATWS, and Part 1 of my series! Wow...  
> The next book will be covering Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War and will be in a separate work, so go to my dashboard to find it when it releases.  
> Thank you all for coming with me this far, and I hope to see you all in part 2!  
> Steve and Natasha _will_ return <3

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about any spelling/grammar errors, I'm just really bad at proof reading my work, so sorry about that...
> 
> Sadly, I do not own the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so any identical dialogue or related entity is the property of Disney Enterprises, not me. Believe me, if _I _owned the MCU, I wouldn't even be writing this fic, because it would already be a reality.__


End file.
